


tires on the pavement, bullet in the chamber, my heart in your hands

by SuperBlondie, topkyungsoo



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Angst with a Happy Ending, Assassin!Kyungsoo, Assassins & Hitmen, Childhood Trauma, Cooking, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Romance, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Gun Violence, Guns, Head Injury, Heartbreak, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, Mystery, Road Trips, Sharing a Bed, Slow Romance, but it is, it might not seem like it, like a lot, trust me im a psych major and a pre-k teacher lol, unhealthy family dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-16 12:28:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 49,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28706694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuperBlondie/pseuds/SuperBlondie, https://archiveofourown.org/users/topkyungsoo/pseuds/topkyungsoo
Summary: Kyungsoo has spent too many years as a hitman to not have something go horrifically wrong on a job. He just didn't expect that horrific complication to come in the form of Byun Baekhyun and the double-crossing scheme that's threatening to kill them both.Maybe Kyungsoo’s been alone for too long if he’s already latched onto the idea of having this little shit as his sidekick for a cross-country journey.Tapping his foot against the ground, fingers clenching and unclenching around his keys, Kyungsoo heaves a deep sigh. “You coming,” he asks. Baekhyun lights up, a little smile on his lips.[ For top!soo fest round 4: Assasin/Hitman AU]
Relationships: Byun Baekhyun/Do Kyungsoo | D.O
Comments: 28
Kudos: 95
Collections: top!soo fest: round 4 (2020-2021)





	tires on the pavement, bullet in the chamber, my heart in your hands

**Author's Note:**

> so this fic was a serious labor of love (and hate. sometimes i really hated this fic). there is honestly not nearly as much violence in this as the tags say, but i am METICULOUS tagger lol so i tag a lot so no one ever dives into a fic unaware of what they're getting themselves into.
> 
> but uh yeah. this was for Assassin/Hitman AU for top!soo fest round 4! I worked really hard on it and i hope you enjoy it! (if you don't...please don't tell me because i WILL cry)
> 
> Now some thank yous! I would like to think A for going over parts of this story even though you're super busy irl!!! It means a lot to me that you'd take time out of your day to help me! And a huge, huge, HUGE thank you to L! You absolutely ripped this fic to pieces and may or may not have made me cry, but in doing so you helped me make this fic a million times better than it would have been. I am so appreciative of the time you took to analyze every last detail and letting me throw a hissy fit/pity party in your DMs lol <3

Kyungsoo slips his favorite knife into the holster strapped around his calf, high enough to be hidden by any creeps that may chance a glance at his ankle but not so high that he foresees any issues retrieving it if necessary. He doesn’t plan on needing the knife, but there’s always a chance of things going sideways on jobs like this one. 

The knife isn’t an Eickhorn, as most of the others in his line of work prefer to keep as a back-up. It’s a chef’s knife, his mother’s, a little nod to what his life could have been if things had only been a little different. She had always wanted him to follow in her footsteps and take over her food stand outside their little house in Goyang. 

Kyungsoo will always feel a bit sad that he was never able to fulfill that dream for her, but things don’t always turn out how one wants or expects them to. At least he’s still able to use her knife for something.

It helps in throwing the police off his trail too, as any kills he makes with that knife look more like an unorganized, opportunistic kill than a professional hit. Just an added bonus.

All Kyungsoo has on him is the knife. His suit jacket is too thin and the security at the venue is too well-trained for him to sneak in a gun on his person. That’s fine though; he had plenty of time to stash six different firearms throughout the fundraiser’s hall earlier that morning, slipping in unnoticed with the cleaning staff who had come to make sure everything was perfect for the night’s festivities.

“Good evening, Mr. Byun. I’m Mr. Oh Hongbin,” he practices his introduction in the rearview mirror of his car. It’s all black but completely unassuming, something that no one would notice or remember if it drove past them in the dead of night. Some of his colleagues prefer something a little more flashy. He’s heard a few of them poke fun at his little four-door, but Kyungsoo is the only assassin in the entire city who hasn’t had to dump his car due to the police putting a BOLO out on it. 

It pays to be discreet. 

He smirks at himself in the mirror, running through facial expressions he rarely has a need for. His hair is perfectly coiffed, suit pressed and well-tailored. For all intents and purposes, Kyungsooo is going to fit right in with the socialites mingling inside the venue, some grandiose building that’s almost obnoxious in its opulence. He looks like someone who  _ would  _ receive an invitation to one of the most exclusive fundraising events of the year.

He didn’t, of course. Kyungsoo will be sneaking in through a window on the third floor and blending in with the crowd from there. 

He hates these sorts of jobs where he has to do a bit of undercover work. He prefers to get in and get out, catching a mark in their office or a parking garage or a back alley, waiting on a rooftop for a perfect shot. But this job is a big one, paying twice his normal going rate. He’ll suffer through a night of mingling and coaxing his mark into somewhere secluded and away from cameras if it means that many zeros are going into his bank account.

After checking to make sure there are no stragglers wandering through the alley where he has set up his home base of sorts, Kyungsoo exits the car and pulls on a pair of latex gloves. Then, he starts to climb up the back of the building. 

He spent a week casing the venue and slowly shifting objects here and there to make his path up to the third story easier. Kyungsoo slips through the bathroom window he left open for himself earlier in the day completely unruffled. The door is locked from the inside to give himself some privacy before he steps out into the party. He grabs his favorite handgun out from where he hid it beneath the sink, a Beretta M9. He prefers to use it with a suppressor attached, but for the sake of being discreet he has decided to go without. 

If all goes to plan, it won’t matter if the shot is quiet or not as he’ll be long gone before anyone can come to investigate the noise.

Kyungsoo checks the magazine and then secures the gun in its hiding place once more. This job is likely to be messy simply because of the publicity surrounding the fundraiser and its participants; Kyungsoo wants to make sure everything goes to plan. This is where he’d most prefer to lure his mark, somewhere far away from the crowd and directly next to an exit.

With everything that he can possibly check checked, Kyungsoo takes a deep breath and braces himself for the worst part of this job—the mingling.

“Mr. Oh Hongbin,” he repeats to everyone he comes across like a broken record. For this job, he is Oh Hongbin, Chief Financial Officer of an up-and-coming cosmetics company. He is invited because of his parents’ connection to the organizer, winking when anyone asks him to expand upon that connection and alluding to Seoul’s bustling underground.

It’s a bit strange for him. Many of the people he rubs elbows with are friends and family of old marks, people Kyungsoo killed in cold blood because they happened to make enemies out of the wrong people. 

It honestly doesn’t bother him all that much. His stomach only twists when he sees Kim Jongin, son of Kim Jimin who Kyungsoo shot between the eyes when Jongin was only fourteen and Kyungsoo was barely nineteen. Jongin is nineteen now, but he looks just as haunted as he did when he found his father’s body.

That is something Kyungsoo regrets, that Jongin had to be the one to find the body.

He buys Jongin a drink as a silent apology before disappearing into the crowd once more. 

Kyungsoo can examine these feelings on his own time. Right now, he’s working for a client, one that hides behind a pseudonym and communicates only through phone calls and is willing to pay enough money that Kyungsoo could very easily never work again if he would be so helpful as to end Byun Baekhyun’s life.

He finds Byun Baekhyun standing with his parents in the middle of a ring of sycophants, looking painfully bored as he sips on his drink. His parents glance at him between conversations and there is just something so flat, so distant and loveless in their eyes. Byun Baekhyun is twenty years old, heir to his parents’ corporation and all the money within. He’s a business major at Yonsei but all his electives are filled with vocal performance credits. He’s reported to be a bit of a brat, whiny and stubborn and not very keen on taking over the company after he graduates.

Byun Baekhyun is twenty years old, and he’ll never see his twenty-first birthday.

Kyungsoo has seen him in pictures, caught glances of him during stakeouts as he was trying to find the best time and place to take him out. He’s much more handsome in person, very boyish and soft in the face with his dark brown hair and button nose, suit a warm grey. 

If he wasn’t a mark, Kyungsoo would be very tempted to invite him into bed and fuck him senseless. As it is, he feels a bit sorry for the fact that someone so obviously innocent is going to die at no fault of his own.

Still, a job is a job, and a job that promises to pay this well is a job that is completed through any means necessary. 

Kyungsoo joins Baekhyun when the young man ventures back to the bar, slipping out from under his parents’ thumbs for just a moment. Baekhyun is known for that, his rebellious nature and knack for disappearing the second either one of his parents lets their attention wander. He catches a glimpse of Kyungsoo out of the corner of his eye and his fake, plastered-on smile shifts into something more genuine. 

“Good evening,” Baekhyun turns to face him. His eyes roam down the line of Kyungsoo’s body and back up again as the mark checks him out with the finesse of a high schooler. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Byun Baekhyun, son of Byun Taemin and Byun Baekhee. A pleasure to meet you.“

“Oh Hongbin. And the pleasure is all mine.” Kyungsoo takes Baekhyun’s outstretched hand and brings it to his lips in a mockery of a kiss. He can’t actually kiss Baekhyun’s knuckle, of course; DNA is a tricky thing, not always easily wiped away by a thumb or “accidental” brushing of hands. 

It does the trick though. Baekhyun’s cheeks turn a light rose under the light from the chandeliers hanging far above them. Baekhyun appears to be a shameless flirt, but Kyungsoo wonders just how many relationships he was actually able to have under the watchful eyes of his parents if a simple kiss to his knuckles is enough to make him blush.

“What brings you here, Hongbin? It’s rare to run into someone new in this circle, particularly around my age.” Baekhyun is quick to start conversation, gently tugging his hand free from Kyungsoo’s. He makes a quiet comment about how hot and stuffy these functions tend to be—to attempt to explain away the flush on his cheeks, Kyungsoo is sure.

Kyungsoo takes the bait and runs with it. He knew that he was going to have to make some sort of small talk if he was ever going to lure Baekhyun away from the crowd. “I am one of the leaders of a cosmetics business that’s starting to amass quite a bit of power in the market. The company is made up of young people who know how to work social media, so we’re growing faster than expected. The CEO pulled a few strings to get me an invitation tonight to help make our business known to more than just teens on Tik Tok.” 

And this is important, making sure that he offers up a different story now so that any potential eavesdroppers don’t connect him with the man that had been alluding to have familial ties to organized crime.

Baekhyun nods. “My parents wanted me to take over the Department of Public Relations within their group to help reach out to our consumer base. Their brand loyalty is much different than how it worked in our parents’ generation, you know. Just a shame that I’m not very good at social media.”

One corner of Kyungsoo’s mouth quirks up. That’s a bold-faced lie. Baekhyun is incredibly popular on social media, though he keeps his accounts under the name Taehyung to hide his identity. It took quite a bit of digging for Kyungsoo to link those accounts to Baekhyun for certain because the mark is just so adept at crafting certain personas and veils of anonymity.

“A shame,” Kyungsoo repeats. “Perhaps your parents would like to work with my company in that respect. We would be happy to offer some help with social media in return for some assistance engaging with older, more established businesses.”

“That could work.” Baekhyun chews on his lower lip and Kyungsoo can’t help but be drawn towards the motion. 

It isn’t a conscious decision, more like a nervous tic from what Kyungsoo has observed and the information he has gleaned from Baekhyun’s medical records. He’s apparently quite anxious. That makes sense though, considering how his entire life has been spent with his parents’ company looming over his head. Kyungsoo thinks that even  _ he  _ would struggle with anxiety if that was his life.

Not for the first time, Kyungsoo wonders why his client wants Baekhyun dead. It would be just as easy, if not easier, to keep the poor boy alive and simply manipulate him into doing whatever it is that the client wants. It would be much cheaper and much less messy too. If Kyungsoo was in his client’s position, he’d prey upon that pathological need for approval, the desire for someone else to make decisions for him that is written about in Baekhyun’s file, and take Baekhyun and the company in one fell swoop.

But Kyungsoo learned very early on that in his line of work there is very little room for logical thinking or solutions that don’t end in bloodshed.

He also learned very early on that his opinions don’t matter. 

Baekhyun hums. He chews on a bit of his lip too roughly and the skin breaks, bright red blood dotting along the miniscule cut. He’s probably been chewing on his lip all night. Kyungsoo forces his gaze and his thoughts away from what that means and focuses on Baekhyun’s face, pretty dark eyes turning ever darker with lust. “This is all hypothetical, of course, but I think we would be excellent liaisons between our two companies. We seem...compatible.”

Kyungsoo smirks, “Very much so. Though I’d love to speak with you in private and see just how compatible we are. It wouldn’t do for either of our businesses if we didn’t get along.”

“Y-yes! Yes, you’re right. I’m free now, if that works for you.” 

It’s all just smoke and mirrors, has been from the very start, just a long, convoluted way of finding a reason to sneak off and fuck under the guise of discussing business. And that is just an even longer, even more convoluted way for Kyungsoo to lure Baekhyun to his death. There is a moment when Kyungsoo wonders if he’s being duped because this is just  _ too  _ easy. But there is no trace of deception in Baekhyun’s eyes and Kyungsoo doesn’t think Baekhyun is much of a liar. Not like Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo has done this sort of thing before; Baekhyun likely has not. He’s very heavy-handed, rushing in much too quickly with absolutely no finesse. It works for Kyungsoo, as he had expected to spend at least an hour working his way into Baekhyun’s good graces before attempting to seduce him. If Kyungsoo was actually who he said he was, he would have already disengaged simply because Baekhyun is a bull in a china shop. He has no patience, no discretion, chomping at the bit because he latches on to the first person to give him a crumb of the attention he’s looking for.

Kyungsoo would find it endearing if it weren’t for the fact that it’s that trait that is going to get Baekhyun killed within the next thirty minutes. As it is, he nods and gestures towards the door to the back staircase with a tip of his head.

After Kyungsoo nods, Baekhyun slips a few bills across the bar to the bartender who is pretending to not give a damn about the conversation. Kyungsoo will have to kill her as well before the night is over; she knows his face, his voice, the more intimate details of one of his lies. She’d be a star witness if the police were able to get their hands on her.

Jobs rarely end in just one death.

They slip out of the central part of the fundraiser with Baekhyun’s arm hooked around Kyungsoo’s. They chat about nothing of importance, mindless small talk to remind themselves to not look quite so eager as they walk towards the staircase reserved for the staff. 

Baekhyun radiates energy, a tiny sun at Kyungsoo’s side. Kyungsoo listens to maybe half of what he’s saying. He’s much more concerned with how many people are staring at them as they walk by. A part of it makes sense. Baekhyun is famous within this circle, heir to the Byun Group. He’s a bit of a black sheep due to his obvious distaste for business, but still someone to watch. 

Kyungsoo accounted for the inevitable onlooker or two who would watch him lead Baekhyun up the stairs; he made sure to part his hair in a way that made him look younger for that exact reason, anything to make him less recognizable, to hinder any sketch the police attempt to make of him. Only fools think that they’re ever truly safe from prying eyes, especially when dealing with a mark  _ this  _ well-known.

But this isn’t just one or two onlookers watching with the interest of bored socialites looking for gossip. There are roughly ten people watching them that Kyungsoo can see, likely more staring at his back. The majority look a bit out of place—some are too stiff and formal, ridgid from sort of training, others are predatory, watching Kyungsoo with the same stare he directs at Baekhyun when the other man calls his attention towards one of the huge floral centerpieces.

That centerpiece in particular is at a table where two men with uncomfortably straight backs are sitting. That centerpiece in particular has a glock hidden within.

Something doesn’t feel right, not particularly wrong, but  _ off.  _

When he looks more closely, walking himself back through how he had hidden all his weapons in the morning, he realizes that every gun has at least one of the strange onlookers waiting nearby. 

Baekhyun doesn’t seem to notice anything is strange and Kyungsoo is certain the ignorance is genuine. He radiated discomfort like a beacon when one of the remora attached to his parents asked about his inheritance of the company, eyes shifting and Adam's apple bobbing nervously. He looked nothing like he does now, excited, cheeks flushed and lips twitching as he attempts to suppress a smile.

He leads Kyungsoo through the door to the service stairs. Kyungsoo feels a strange sort of alarm blare in the back of his mind. He glances back over his shoulder and sees Suho, one of the few colleagues he knows well enough to recognize on sight. Suho shrugs at him with a smirk, a hand slipped beneath his suit jacket to settle at his hip.

It wouldn’t be the first time Kyungsoo ran into a colleague at a job. Marks are often settled with one of a few elite circles, leading to a lot of overlap, but Suho isn’t staking out a mark, isn’t looking at anyone but Kyungsoo.

Something is wrong.

The second the door closes behind them, Kyungsoo grabs Baekhyun by the wrist and yanks him up the stairs, gritting his teeth to keep himself from spitting curses.

He’s been double-crossed. Someone fucking set him up. 

There are police and other hitmen here, just waiting for him to make a move. And he got so caught up in his own thoughts and the sher number of zeros that are about be added to his bank account and Baekhyun’s pretty fucking face that he didn’t notice he was walking right into a trap.

“Woah! You’re excited! I mean, I am too, but you seemed a bit more reserved! Hey, um, could you maybe loosen your grip on my wrist a little? It’s starting to hurt.” Baekhyun keeps pace as Kyungsoo all but sprints up the stairs. He sounds a little confused but still so eager. Kyungsoo almost wants to laugh at his ignorance.

Everyone knows about the contract for his life but him.

Kyungsoo’s got more important things to think about though. His mind is racing, trying to come up with some sort of escape route. He always has one in place for the instance that his mark has police or some other security on the lookout for danger, but he’s never really considered that he’d have to escape from other assassins too.

He gets lucky. No one is waiting for him on the third floor, everyone likely congregating on the second floor because they thought that would be where he decided to run. Once they realize that he hasn’t, though, they’ll be swarming this floor as the only other possible exit, the fourth floor too high. The staff exit is too obvious to even consider. His car is out of the question as well. Suho knows what it looks like and probably has a bomb set underneath it to go off the moment he tries to drive away.

Kyungsoo drags Baekhyun into the bathroom to grab his pistol. “Hongbin,” Baekhyun asks, voice soft and shaky as he watches Kyungsoo dig through the cabinet beneath the sink. “Hongbin, what’s going on? This isn’t really where I’d like to hook up. Gun! Gun! Oh my God, you’ve got a gun! What the fuck?”

“Shut up,” Kyungsoo hisses. He checks the magazine and the safety. “Just shut up. I need to think.”

“W-were you going to kill me? What the fuck? Oh my God, what the fuck!” Baekhyun flattens himself against the door. 

Kyungsoo considers killing him now just to finish the job and to keep him from identifying him in case his escape doesn’t go as planned. He raises the gun and levels it at Baekhyun’s face. Baekhyun bursts into tears, innocent in a way that hurts Kyungsoo low in his chest. Kyungsoo decides the police are less likely to kill him if he’s got a hostage to leverage. He lowers his gun.

“I was. But now you’re going to shut your mouth and come with me. No fighting or screaming or you’re dead, am I understood?” Baekhyun nods, biting down hard on his lip to stifle his sniffles. Kyungsoo grunts in approval. He shoves Baekhyun to the side and gently cracks open the bathroom door to scope out the hallway. “Stay behind me. If I think you’re running, I will shoot without hesitation. You drove here tonight, right?”

“Y-yeah. I parked out back because I don’t like valets.”

“So you’ve got your keys on you. That’s good. That’s perfect. Give them to me. And drop your phone in the toilet. Anything that could be used to track you needs to be gotten rid of here and now or you’re dead as soon as we get to your car,” Kyungsoo watches with satisfaction as Baekhyun quickly chucks his phone in the toilet and hands over his car keys. 

Baekhyun is still crying. He wipes furiously at his cheeks and fights to steady his breathing. “P-please, don’t kill me. I didn’t do anything to you! Just let me go and we can pretend this never happened, I promise. I won’t tell a soul.”

“I might let you go later. But right now, you’re my ticket out of here. Cops won’t shoot you.” Kyungsoo watches the elevator at the end of the hall show that a car is coming up. He yanks the door closed and locks it from the inside. “Out the window, go now.”

“What?”

Kyungsoo shoves Baekhyun toward the window. “Out the window. I’ll lead you down.”

Baekhyun goes, shoving open the window with shaking hands. He crawls out with a little whimper. The sound of his feet hitting the wooden crate Kyungsoo had positioned a foot below the window is damningly loud and Kyungsoo hisses when he hears it. “Watch your fucking step,” he snarls, “Don’t be so loud.”

“I can’t help it! I’m scared!” Baekhyun stares up at him with an impressive amount of outrage for someone still crying helplessly. “You try climbing out of a window in the dark with a gun pointed at you!”

“The gun isn’t pointed at you anymore.” It’s all Kyungsoo can think to say as he follows Baekhyun out the window. He’s had people mouth off at him before, even when he’s had a gun pressed to their head, but never with that much confidence, that much sass. 

Kyungsoo leads Baekhyun down to the alley. About halfway down, Kyungsoo sees a shadow move near his car, the streetlight glinting off metal. He doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t even think. Kyungsoo just points and shoots once, twice, until he hears a shout of pain that cuts off in a quiet gurgle.

His heart is racing, blood pumping, adrenaline filling his veins. This is always the worst part for him, the killing and the thrill of the chase. He’s used to it by now, but it’s still not something he enjoys. He was never in this for the murder, just the money. He knows how to let the death wash over him and roll off his back like water off a duck’s wing.

Baekhyun startles at the sound of the gunshots. A little scream jumps out of his mouth and Kyungsoo has to reach back and grab his wrist to keep him from falling on his ass in shock. 

“Keep going, you can have a breakdown in the car.”

Baekhyun nods, near hysteria. “O-okay.” He keeps moving even as he lets out these pathetic little sounds of terror.

They hit the ground running. Kyungsoo shoves Baekhyun in front of him with an order to take him to the car. He forces Baekhyun to put his head down, making him less of a target.

It’s not a moment too soon, as they’ve hardly started to run when footsteps come from around the corner and shots sound off from behind them. “Stop! Put your hands in the air! This is the police and we are ordering you to stop! Stop!”

The bullets race past them, many of them coming much too close for comfort. Kyungsoo flinches when he hears one buzz past his ear. Baekhyun, to his credit, keeps running, screaming but not stumbling. Kyungsoo looks back. Three people, two with guns, one with what looks like a walkie-talkie. He fires a few wild off shots behind them and lets out a huff of relief when the bullets land, taking out all three well enough that they won’t be able to follow them to the car.

Baekhyun’s car is surprisingly discreet. It’s a silver Honda, something much more practical than Kyungsoo would’ve expected. It’ll fit right into Kyungsoo’s neighborhood, though he’ll have to change the license plates a few times to throw the cops off his trail.

Kyungsoo’s not even sure how long he’s going to be able to spend in his apartment before the other assassins sniff out his address and come calling with guns blazing. It’ll be long enough for him to gather what he needs to flee the city, possibly the entire country.And most importantly, his files on who ordered the hit on Baekhyun.

Because he’s pretty sure that whoever his mystery client is the one who set him up, or at least knows who did it, and he’s going to rip them to shreds.

Kyungsoo and Baekhyun come to a stop at the car, Kyungsoo on the driver’s side, Baekhyun the passenger’s. They’re panting for air, chests heaving. Baekhyun is doubled over with his hands on his knees and he’s absolutely vulnerable. 

Kyungsoo doesn’t really need him anymore. The police aren’t much of a danger anymore now that he’s got transportation. He’ll be gone before they even figure out his fake name. The other assassins won’t care who Kyungsoo’s with, they’ll kill whoever they have to to finish the job and get paid. Baekhyun’s not the get out of jail free card he was five minutes ago, just another mark once more. 

Kyungsoo’s still got a few bullets left in his gun.

People are pouring out of the venue behind them, some in terror and some in pursuit of Kyungsoo and his hostage.

“You’re going to kill me now, aren’t you,” Baekhyun whispers. He seems to know exactly what this relative safety means, how fragile and tentative their truce was. His voice cracks as he stares Kyungsoo down through his tears. He hasn’t stopped crying since Kyungsoo pulled the gun on him in the bathroom, but he’s never stopped moving. “Go on. Fucking do it. I’m not gonna ruin my last moments by begging for my life.”

He’s resilient, he’s smart, he’s got a spine of steel to snark at a man with a gun.

Kyungsoo tucks his gun into his waistband and unlocks the car. “Get in. I don’t want to kill you unless I know I’m getting my fucking money. But give me a single reason not to trust you and I’ll paint your brain all over the interior of your car.”

“Or you could let me go and I’ll pay you whatever you were promised? No? Fine, we’ll do it your way.” Baekhyun slips into the car and buckles himself in without another word, sniffling softly.

Kyungsoo has never regretted a decision so fast. But he’s made a decision, and he doesn’t have the luxury of changing his mind now that people are starting to take notice of the car at the back of the venue. 

He gets in the car and slams on the gas, tires squealing against the pavement as he starts driving east.

* * *

Kyungsoo grits his teeth at the clattering of cups to the floor, looking from where he’s shoving files into a duffle bag to see Baekhyun standing in his tiny kitchen with his hands behind his back, cheeks red as he attempts to maintain a picture of innocence. “I told you. Don’t fucking touch anything,” Kyungsoo snarls.

Baekhyun looks at him with fear. His eyes are wide under the brim of the baseball cap Kyungsoo shoved on his head when they pulled up the curb outside of Kyungsoo’s shithole apartment. He needed a disguise. Kyungsoo wouldn’t put it past some of his nosier neighbors to recognize him and call the number for the tip line that’s been airing his description over TV and radio for the past half hour. The sunglasses came off as soon as they were inside because Baekhyun is a curious little shit and immediately started looking around the apartment.

“S-sorry,” Baekhyun shuffles out of the kitchen with his hands clasped in front of him. “Not every day you get to look around the apartment of a serial killer.”

Kyungsoo grits his teeth at that, irritation bristling under his skin. He’s not a fucking serial killer. Yes, his body count is higher than Ted Bundy’s, but it’s different. Serial killers are in it for the thrill, he’s in it for the money. He’s  _ not  _ a fucking serial killer. And he tells Baekhyun as much.

Baekhyun shrugs. “Apartment of an assassin, then. It’s a lot messier than I would have thought.”

The fucking  _ mouth  _ on this kid.

Kyungsoo strongly regrets deciding to spare his life, is kicking himself for deciding to bring the brat with him. “Just don’t touch anything. We’re not going to be here long and I don’t want your DNA or fingerprints on anything. And you’re messing up my shit.” 

A little huff comes from where Baekhyun is perusing Kyungsoo’s cluttered bookshelves. Kyungsoo tries not to think about how easy it would have been to just toss the little shit into the Han river on the drive over. Instead, he focuses on gathering up all his intelligence. His files, his flash drives, his notes on his enemies and supposed allies, everything goes into his duffle bag along with his laptop and arsenal of burner phones. 

He had a safehouse with a bag full of necessities like clothing, food, and water just a few blocks away, but he saw what was left of its ashes on the drive over, likely burned to the ground in hopes he was inside.

He checked his inbox on the contracting site. As he figured, the contract for his life is plastered, pinned to the top of all the listings and sent as an emergency message to all the hitmen who are too good to bother looking for jobs. As he figured, anything and everything related to the mark on Baekhyun is gone, completely wiped off the site. Good thing he printed out the original message about the job and took notes on every call between him and his mystery client, including where his tracking software said their approximate location was.

Kyungsoo is absolutely convinced that this client had a major part to play in putting the hit out on him. He could be wrong; it could be one of the many enemies he’s made over the years finally deciding to try to get rid of him, but he doesn’t think so. Still, he’s taking every file he thinks is relevant, and most that he doesn’t just to be safe.

Regardless of who put out the hit, he’s going to find them, and he’s going to end their fucking life.

He’s also going to steal all their money and go retire somewhere in the mountains. But first he’s going to kill them for doing this to him.

When he’s done packing away everything important, he looks up to see Baekhyun  _ touching his things.  _ He’s flipping through Kyungsoo’s mother’s scrapbook and Kyungsoo really thinks about blowing his brains out. But then he looks up with a little smile, “Is this your mom? She’s really pretty. You look like her.”

And Kyungsoo can’t bring himself to reach for his pistol.

Kyungsoo gets up and snatches the scrapbook out of Baekhyun’s hands with a scowl. He gently places it and all the pictures he has on the bookshelf in a separate duffle bag before grabbing Baekhyun by the shoulders and pushing him to sit on the ratty couch in front of the old, half-broken TV and scuffed up coffee table. Baekhyun looks up with confused brown eyes that look much too pretty under the nasty yellow lighting of Kyungsoo’s apartment.

“Sit here and  _ do not  _ move. If I come back out and you’re not sitting in this exact fucking position, I’ll kill you.” Kyungsoo holds Baekhyun’s gaze until the other man nods, Adam's apple bobbing. Then, Kyungsoo raids his pantry for anything useful and disappears into his bedroom to finish packing.

Kyungsoo fills two duffle bags with clothing and toiletries, multiple boxes of protein bars and snacks to keep his energy up. He somehow manages to get a few blankets and pillows packed away as well for when he inevitably ends up sleeping in his car. 

This is going to be a long trip to find the person who wants him dead, even longer considering he’s going to be on the run from hitmen and police, hiding his tracks as he makes his trek across the country and back. He has no delusions about solving this mystery on the first try, that his client didn’t use some sort of VPN to bounce their location all over Korea. He’s got things hidden around the country as well for a situation just like this, lockboxes hidden with some of the few people he can trust to help him flee the country after all this is said and done.

He comes back out of the bedroom with two duffle bags to add to the two sitting by the coffee table. Baekhyun hasn’t moved, though the way he’s starting to jitter in place says he’s got a horrible itch to go snooping around Kyungsoo’s apartment. 

It’s like he’s got no fucking sense of self-preservation, completely uncaring of the fact that he’s pissing off a man who could kill him without a second of hesitation.

Kyungsoo shakes his head but doesn’t say anything. Baekhyun did as he was told. Besides, he won’t be Kyungsoo’s problem for much longer. He’s got to grab a few more mementos that he can’t bear to part with and then he’s ready to haul ass out of Seoul and the hoard of hitmen that thrive in the city’s underground. 

A part of Kyungsoo will be sad to leave this apartment. It’s been his home for the past few years, ever since he moved to Seoul and started working as a hitman. It’s a shithole, a little shoebox that he couldn’t keep clean unless he threw out most of his stuff. But it was  _ his  _ little shoebox. He hopes that his former colleagues won’t trash it once they realize that he’s already left, at least, but they likely will. 

They’re already trashing the decoy apartment he has in Gangnam according to the security cameras he has streaming to his phone. Paying two rents wasn’t the most ideal, but he had wanted to keep a diversion ready just in case something like this happened, a lease under his real name so that no one would go sniffing around for any of his known aliases.

“Your name’s not Hongbin, is it?” Kyungsoo looks up from where he’d been watching Jeonghan tear apart the kitchen in search of any hidden weapons and Suho dig through the bookshelves on his phone. The bounty on Kyungsoo’s head must be absolutely enormous to make his former colleagues work together. He hadn’t bothered to see just how much money he was worth, thought it would be a bit too morbid.

Kyungsoo drops his phone on the floor and smashes it beneath the sole of his boot. He grinds it beneath his heel until it’s nothing but broken glass and sparking electronics. Smartphones are just too easy to track.

Then, he narrows his eyes at Baekhyun, searching his face for a hint of bad intentions. He doesn’t find any, because Baekhyun is the only innocent person in this entire clusterfuck. That doesn’t mean he should tell Baekhyun his real name though. In fact, that’s a reason Kyungsoo  _ shouldn’t  _ offer up any unnecessary information. He doesn’t think Baekhyun will run to the cops once Kyungsoo leaves him behind, but he wouldn’t put it past the NIS to send an agent out to get any and all information possible out of Baekhyun by any means necessary. 

The NIS made a file for him under the name Moon Chanhee after he killed their last director for interfering with a job. 

It’s not like Kyungsoo is going to be doing any more jobs after this though, if he even stays in the country after he takes care of whoever put the hit out on him. 

Kyungsoo pauses for a moment, huffing out a breath at his own stupidity. He can’t help but want there to be someone who remembers him as he really is, without an alias or false pretense, that stupid human desire to not be forgotten. 

“No. No, it’s not,” Kyungsoo shakes his head and grabs the last few items he needs, a picture of him and his father on his first day of kindergarten, all the spare ammo he keeps in a box beneath his love seat, and two spare handguns. “My name is Kyungsoo. Doh Kyungsoo. Tell anyone and—”

“And you’ll kill me. I got it. I’m not stupid. I’m well aware that I’m lucky to still be alive,” Baekhyun says. He picks at a loose thread coming out of the couch cushion underneath him. He frowns and Kyungsoo frowns with him. “Kind of fucks you up to know that someone wants you dead so bad that they’ll pay a stupid amount of money just to see it happen, you know? Still trying to process it all. Trauma’s a bitch.”

Kyungsoo shrugs. He shoulders all four of his duffle bags and makes for the door. He feels a pang of sympathy for Baekhyun; poor guy got caught up in something much bigger than himself, a target on his back for no other reason than someone else’s greed. But Kyungsoo’s not one for feelings, so he shoves them down, compartmentalizes. “That’s what therapy is for. Now, come on, I need to go.” Baekhyun follows without another word.

Kyungsoo takes one last look at his apartment as he ushers Baekhyun out the front door, hat and sunglasses in place once more. It reminds him of the house he shared with his mother, cluttered and messy and lived in and the closest thing he’s had to home since he turned sixteen. Then, he flips off the lights, shuts the door, and hopes that whoever makes it here first has the decency to leave it as they find it.

Back out on the street, underneath a streetlight, Kyungsoo shoves two duffle bags in the trunk of his car, the other two in the backseat. He already switched the license plates on the car twice with some of the cars parked nearby that he knows don’t belong to his neighbors. With any luck, they’ll drive away without noticing the change and he’ll have enough time to change his license plate again before his pursuers even figure out his old one.

Baekhyun stands on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, shoulders slumped. He looks so out of place here, so unlike the man Kyungsoo has seen in pictures, the cocky little shit at the fundraiser earlier that night. His eyes are hidden by the tint of his sunglasses, but he’s radiating uncertainty and discomfort. 

Kyungsoo stands at the driver’s side door. He’s got his keys in hand, ready to hop into the car and get the hell out of Seoul before anyone is able to catch up with him and he loses what little headstart he’s managed to create for himself. 

But he doesn’t. He doesn’t get into the car and drive away.

Instead, he stares at Baekhyun, who is staring right back at him. Baekhyun has to know that this is where they part ways, that they should’ve parted ways back at the fundraiser. Baekhyun has even admitted that he’s lucky to be alive. He can’t be expecting anything more from Kyungsoo than what he’s already received. Hell, he is making it abundantly clear that he  _ doesn’t  _ expect anything else; he’s standing in front of Kyungsoo’s former apartment building, not anywhere near the passenger side door. Kyungsoo should leave him there and go.

But he still doesn’t.

Kyungsoo looks around the neighborhood, dilapidated and in disrepair, filled with those of hardened hearts and very little sympathy for outsiders. Some people are waiting under a streetlight not far from them, making furtive glances to where Baekhyun stands with his nice suit, expensive watch, and pretty face. 

He can’t leave Baekhyun here. He can’t. The other man is too soft, too naive, too mouthy for his own good. He’s got that innocence about him that would get him chewed up and spit back out before he even made it to the nearest bus stop. Kyungsoo just can’t leave him here.

He wasn’t planning to either, not if he thinks about it. He packed way too much shit for just one person—he’s got an extra fucking toothbrush in one of his duffle bags. He was always planning to take Baekhyun with him.

Maybe Kyungsoo’s been alone for too long if he’s already latched onto the idea of having this little shit as his sidekick for a cross-country journey. 

Tapping his foot against the ground, fingers clenching and unclenching around his keys, Kyungsoo heaves a deep sigh. “You coming,” he asks. Baekhyun lights up, a little smile on his lips. “You don’t have to. You can stay here and go catch a bus home and pretend this whole night never happened. If you get in this car, you’re in this for the long haul. I’ve got people after me and I have to find the asshole who put out the hits on you and me. If you come with me, you’re going to see way too much shit for me to just let you go alive. You understand?”

Baekhyun nods. His sunglasses slip down his nose and Kyungsoo can’t help but stare at the electric energy in those big brown eyes. “I understand. Not like there’s anything better waiting for me at home,” Baekhyun scurries to the car and settles himself in the passenger seat. “At least you’re honest with me. Thank you for that, by the way, being honest about your name. I don’t really get that a lot.” 

Kyungsoo wonders, for a moment, what Baekhyun’s home life must be like if he thinks that going on the run from hitmen with another hitman that held him hostage and has threatened to kill him is the better alternative to going home. He keeps his thoughts to himself though. He isn’t one for opening up and having long, deep talks about feelings and life.

“So, uh, Kyungsoo, let’s go. Have to hurry before they catch us, right? And can I pick the music we listen to?” Baekhyun pulls off his hat and sunglasses and the sides of his mouth quirk up as he looks at Kyungsoo. 

Baekhyun’s already shaping up to be a royal pain in the ass, but Kyungsoo decides that it’s somewhat nice to have company on this cross-country roadtrip from hell. Besides, it’ll be good for Baekhyun to find out who wanted him dead, maybe allow him the opportunity to take a bit of revenge. 

Or maybe not, Kyungsoo isn’t sure if he wants to have responsibility in stripping away that innocence.

“Buckle up,” Kyungsoo orders as he pulls away from the curb. “Safety first.”

Baekhyun snorts and Kyungsoo fights a dry laugh. 

“That’s fucking cheap coming from the man who has threatened me with a gun like five times tonight.” Baekhyun pushes his hair out of his face and reaches over to fiddle with the radio, flipping through stations until he settles on some bubblegum pop girl group. “Where are we going, anyway? You haven’t said.”

“Daegu, that’s where my tracking software pinged the client’s location. They’re not going to be there, but there should be some sort of clue as to where they actually are.” Kyungsoo checks the rearview mirror every few seconds, paranoid that he took too much time and his former colleagues are just waiting to ambush him. “Get some sleep,” Kyungsoo reaches behind himself into the backseat to fish a blanket out of one of the duffle bags. “It’s been a long night, and it’s only going to get longer.”

* * *

Kyungsoo passes the sign welcoming him to Daegu just before dawn. The drive should have only taken him three or four hours, but he stuck to the back roads, straying away from major highways and CCTV cameras. The car may have tinted windows, but Kyungsoo isn’t willing to bet his life on them. He’s just relieved that Baekhyun chose a car with good gas mileage. He’s only had to stop for gas once, some ancient gas station in the middle of nowhere that, by some insane measure of luck, still took cash. 

They won’t need gas again for a while, but they will need more cash. He should’ve shaken Baekhyun awake as they were passing through one of the smaller cities and had him use an ATM. As is, they’ll just have to make what they have between them last until they’re getting ready to leave Daegu.

But Baekhyun is asleep in the passenger seat, has been since midnight, after he crawled into the backseat at Kyungsoo’s request and changed out of his flashy suit and into some of Kyungsoo’s clothes. He’s in a t-shirt and sweatpants, both a blue so navy it's almost black. The blanket he’s wrapped himself in is black as well—Kyungsoo has never been one for color that can draw one’s eye. He likes things black, discreet, practical.

Baekhyun has his seat leaned all the way back, head tipped to the side and jaw slack. He snores, not loudly, but loudly enough that Kyungsoo can hear him over the hum of the radio. Kyungsoo offered him the backseat, but Baekhyun brushed him off and did what he could to get comfortable in the passenger seat.

Kyungsoo is a little envious of his sleep, however uncomfortable it may be. He’s now officially gone twenty-four hours without sleep; it’s nothing he hasn’t done before, but it has been a very long time and he’s not as accustomed to it as he used to be. 

He  _ could  _ pull over into a side street now and steal himself a few hours of rest. He considers it, really considers it, as he watches the city slowly begin to wake up outside the windows, listens to Baekhyun snore in the seat beside him. But he still has that address to find, people to question, hitmen to outrun. Any second he pisses away right now is a second his former colleagues have to catch up to him. Kyungsoo is a damn good assassin, but he’s not arrogant, he, and, by extension, Baekhyun, are dead the second the other Seoul hitmen find them.

That’s if the Daegu hitmen haven’t also received the contract for Kyungsoo’s life and aren’t tracking his car at that very moment.

The idea chills him down to his bones. Kyungsoo leans forward in his seat and cranes his neck to scan the passing buildings, gaze on the rooftops. He doesn’t see anything, but it’s still dark outside, the sunrise on the horizon hidden behind the clouds. 

Kyungsoo isn’t even sure if Daegu  _ has  _ hitmen that reside there as their base of operations. The thought is comforting, but it also reminds him of all the jobs that brought him to this city and how he has no idea how many of his former colleagues are working in the city right now. 

They will be spending the night in Daegu tonight simply because he is only human and  _ has  _ to sleep at some point. But he’d like to track down his client’s last known location and gather a few more clues as to who they actually are and where he can find them first, if for nothing else than to feel like he hasn’t wasted his headstart.

Kyungsoo lets Baekhyun sleep until morning has well and truly come. It’s a peaceful morning, as peaceful as a morning can be in the current circumstances. The way Baekhyun sleeps complements the soft, warm yellow sunlight. For a moment, when Baekhyun finally stops fucking snoring and the car is a moment of picturesque tranquility, Kyungsoo can almost pretend he’s not running for his life.

He pulls into a convenience store two blocks away from the address he’d scribbled down onto a notepad and shoved into the file he’d made for the hit. He makes files for most jobs, especially the important ones, for the marks that have their own wikipedia pages. Most of his clients for those sorts of jobs prefer to be anonymous, but he does his best to track down any information he can on them and on the mark, trying to create a bigger picture than just a person who he has to kill and the person who wants them dead. 

It’s been very helpful in the past. Once, he found that his mark was actually looking to put a hit out on his client for double the pay after just a few minutes of cursory digging. 

Strangely enough, for the fact that Baekhyun is the heir to one of the most well-known business empires, his file is thinner than most of the others sitting in Kyungsoo’s duffle bag. Kyungsoo found plenty of information on Baekhyun’s parents’ company, some on the man himself, though very little of it was useful, but gathered next to none about the client. 

They offered no identifying information other than the verification that they would pay at the end of the job, a gold seal of approval from the company hosting the site for all the contracts. They called from a few different locations and used software to have their actual location ping as several different places at once on most tracking programs. Kyungsoo had to dig out an ancient dinosaur of a program to finally pin down their location during that final call two nights ago. 

The location is apparently an internet cafe, quaint, cozy, something very pastel and sweet. It’s somewhere Kyungsoo would like to spend a Sunday morning with a cup of coffee. He tries to picture his client sitting at one of the lilac tables on the patio, calling to make sure Kyungsoo was still going to put a bullet through another person’s head. He can’t; he simply can’t imagine anyone with the intelligence to outsmart him would be stupid enough to talk about something like murder out in public.

They must have not been out in public then. His client must have some sort of business stake in the cafe, perhaps the owner, or, in what is the much more believable option, the head of a company with a million different subsidiaries, one of which that owns the cafe, who could easily stop in during a work trip and commandeer an office in the back. 

If he had access to the internet, he could easily look up the cafe and find out everything he needs to know about its parent company. From there he could cross-check his records of past jobs against the company’s most important employees, any matches would be excellent candidates for his piece of shit client. That would still leave the question as to why Baekhyun was involved in this scheme, but Baekhyun is such a well-known figure to the public that he truly could have been chosen at random.

But Kyungsoo doesn’t have any access to Wi-Fi, nor any devices with data, just his laptop and about fifty thousand won in cash in his wallet. It’s more than enough to buy two coffees.

Kyungsoo groans and grits his teeth, dragging his hands down his face.

He reaches over and shakes Baekhyun awake. 

Baekhyun startles. He jerks, eyes fluttering open. “Wuh,” he wipes at the dried drool on his cheek and starts a series of stretches, reaching out with his arms and legs until they shake. “H-how long time is it? Ugh, no, wrong. What time is it? How long was I asleep?” 

“A little after eight. And a long fucking time.”

“Damn,” Baekhyun yawns, “Really? I slept that long? I don’t think I’ve slept that long in weeks? Months? A long fucking time. Why didn’t you wake me up? Aren’t we on the run?”

Kyungsoo hums noncommittally. “You were tired. And I did wake you up. Just now. I didn’t need you awake any earlier and I figured you would be more useful to me well-rested.”

Baekhyun blinks at him as he rubs the lingering sleep from his eyes. His face is puffy from sleep, it softens his already soft features, eyes half-lidded. Baekhyun smiles and Kyungsoo just knows he’s about to say something fucking stupid. “Aw! That’s so sweet of you! Didn’t know hitmen could be so considerate. If it weren’t for the fact that you’ve threatened to kill me several times, I might think you like me.”

Kyungsoo closes his eyes and takes a long, deep breath in through his nose. He should have never listened to the part of him that craved company—loneliness would have been better than being stuck with this little asshole. “Promised. I  _ promised  _ to kill you. And I still will if you keep running your mouth.”

That wipes the smile off Baekhyun’s face pretty fast. He shifts in his seat, broadcasting his discomfort. And Kyungsoo doesn’t like that either.

“Listen, it’ll take a lot for me to kill you right now, okay? I don’t like to kill anyone unless I have to or unless I’m being paid a lot of fucking money,” he explains, sighing at the fear in Baekhyun’s eyes. “If someone puts out a new hit on you for the same amount of money, then yeah, start running because I’ll kill you without hesitation. But I’m not going to shoot you for being annoying. I said we’re in this for the long-haul, right?”

Baekhyun nods.

“Then we are.”

“Then would you mind not threatening me anymore,” Baekhyun asks. Kyungsoo nods, as it’s a reasonable request and he is a reasonable man. “Thanks. So, you said you woke me up because you need me? What do you need me for?”

Kyungsoo straightens up and points to where the sign for the internet cafe is sticking out, just visible two blocks over. “That is the last known location of whoever put out the hit on you and tried to set me up. I know they weren’t a customer, because what kind of dumbass would discuss an assassination attempt in public? That means they’re someone high up on the food chain of whatever company owns that cafe and made the call in an office, somewhere no one else would hear them.”

Baekhyun nods along as Kyungsoo explains his plan to pose as a couple and use the cafe’s Wi-Fi, making appropriate listening noises even though his mouth is hanging open in obvious confusion as to where Kyungsoo is going. At least he’s trying, Kyungsoo will give him points for that. 

“I think I understand what you’re saying, at least part of it. But wouldn’t it be safer to find a different internet cafe? Or just a different place with free Wi-Fi? If this is where your client called you from, wouldn’t they think you’d eventually track them down and so be waiting for you to show up? There could be police or other hitmen waiting for us—or both,” Baekhyun talks with his hands, waving, point, gesturing. Between his hands and his expressive features, Kyungsoo can hardly pay attention to his words.

But Kyungsoo does. And Kyungsoo has the irritating realization that Baekhyun is right.

His sleep-deprived brain hadn’t even thought of a trap. He growls low in his throat. He internally berates himself for not taking a nap when he had the chance. He had been too focused on planning out his next steps in finding the client that he hadn’t even considered that the client may be actively trying to find him as well, or at least attempting to track him to make sure he hasn’t gotten close to finding them first.

It isn’t a devastating setback, but it’s a setback all the same. 

“Also, I don’t think you could count last night as an assassination attempt. Neither you nor me are important enough for that. It’s all about politics.” Baekhyun pops the ‘p’, a stupid, smarmy grin on his face. He shrugs when Kyungsoo pins him with a scowl. 

Kyungsoo feels a headache building behind his eyes. Still, he can’t stop himself from responding, “Assassination and murder are just different names for the same thing, aren’t they?”

Baekhyun shrugs again, eyebrows pulling together as he thinks. “How would I know? You’re the assassin here. Or are you? Have you ever assassinated someone? Actually, maybe don’t answer that. I don’t think I want to know how many people you’ve killed.”

Before Kyungsoo can answer, or rather, tell the other man to shut the hell up before he gives Kyungsoo a stupidity-induced migraine, Baekhyun’s stomach growls. Kyungsoo’s answers it in kind a moment later. “How about this? We end this conversation here, before you give me a migraine, and you buy us both breakfast somewhere with Wi-Fi. I’ll even let you pick the place.”

Baekhyun hums in thought, tapping one long finger against his chin, “Alright,” he says with a little smile. “But while you’re doing your hitman research, could you look up the difference between assassination and murder? I’m actually somewhat invested in it now that I’ve had the chance to think about it. Also, I want McDonald’s.”

“McDonald’s.” Kyungsoo stares straight out the windshield, at the ice fridge outside the convenience store. “You want McDonald’s? That American fast food shit?” 

“Yes,” Baekhyun nods. “It has free Wi-Fi  _ and  _ really good hash browns. Coffee would be nice as well, especially for you.”

He can’t help but wonder what sort of spoiled rich kid Baekhyun must be that McDonald’s is his breakfast of choice. Then again, what little Kyungsoo has gotten to learn of Baekhyun in the past few hours have made it clear he isn’t the typical spoiled rich kid.

“You have cash, right,” Kyungsoo starts the car and pulls out of the convenience store parking lot. Baekhyun nods, pulling out his wallet and a tube of chapstick from his back pocket. “Good. We need to be untraceable. Suho has likely already ransacked my old apartment and is narrowing down possible cities I might have fled to. They’re going to be looking for you now as well, you know.Your dead body hasn’t turned up yet so they think that I either dumped you in the Han river, or that I took you with me.”

“Masks and baseball caps, then? I guess it’s a good thing that your wardrobe isn’t made for standing out. Do you have any sweatpants with drawstrings though? I don’t think the pair I have on are going to stay up on their own,” Baekhyun pulls at the waistband of his pants to show how loose they are on him, meant for someone built a good deal thicker. 

Kyungsoo only snorts in response. He smirks to himself and doesn’t respond, instead turning all of his attention to the road.

It takes a bit of driving to find a McDonald’s, but when they arrive they find that it’s almost entirely empty. The only other customers are an elderly couple sitting in a booth by a big picture window. Baekhyun snags them a little table on the opposite side of the restaurant while Kyungsoo orders for them, a few bills from Baekhyun’s wallet in his hand. 

While they wait for their food, Kyungsoo opens up his laptop and starts searching the internet cafe’s name online. Baekhyun decided to sit beside Kyungsoo instead of sitting across from him. He looks over Kyungsoo’s shoulder as he works, breathing in his ear. It’s only Kyungsoo’s years of training that keeps him from shivering and shoving the other man away. He shoulders on, looking for something that ties that little café to a bigger company, to someone who would want Kyungsoo dead and wouldn’t be afraid to sacrifice Baekhyun to make that happen. Kyungsoo has knowingly pissed off a great deal of people, likely pissed off even more from the consequences of his actions rippling out, figuring out which one is out to kill him is akin to searching for a needle in a stack of other needles that look just like it.

“Wait,” Baekhyun hisses in Kyungsoo’s ear. He points to the name listed as a parent to the little LLC in charge of the internet café. “That’s not right. The Min group doesn’t own anything outside of manufacturing and technology. I’ve looked through their assets before to help my parents decide who to work with when they wanted to branch out into the steel business. The Mins are titans in the manufacturing world, cafes just aren’t their style.”

Kyungsoo turns to Baekhyun and feels a smidgeon of awe. He’s impressed. He had never considered Baekhyun as a real ally, more like just someone to keep him company. But Baekhyun has insider knowledge that Kyungsoo could never hope to find.

Baekhyun, face screwed up in concentration, doesn’t even notice. He just keeps talking. “And Black Pearl, the company that directly owns the café, I know that name. God, I know that name. But where do I know it from? Listen, I don’t remember  _ who  _ owns Black Pearl, but I know that it isn’t the Min group. Someone changed it. They got into the databases and changed it.”

Baekhyun turns to Kyungsoo then. His face is quickly losing its color, eyes watery. His breaths come quick and uneven.

Kyungsoo swallows down the lump in his throat. When Baekhyun grabs Kyungsoo by the wrist, he doesn’t shake him off. His stomach sinks to the floor. He knew that whoever had weaved this web was powerful, but he had never imagined he was going up against someone with this much control, this much sway. 

With the sort of money it would take to make all those websites and databases change their information, to scrub any mention of Black Pearl and that damned internet café as belonging to their real parent company, Kyungsoo has no idea what his former client is capable of.

“W-we’re going to die, aren’t we,” Baekhyun whispers, voice trembling just as the hand on Kyungsoo’s arm does.

Kyungsoo sets his jaw. He narrows his eyes at the lies on the screen and feels determination burn through his body, so angry that some rich asshole decided to set this trap, to take their grudge towards Kyungsoo out on Baekhyun, who, for all his annoyances, is someone Kyungsoo can’t help but care about just a little bit. “No. But they will. Let’s get to the car and we’ll decide where to go from here. Keep thinking on who owns Black Pearl and try not to panic. We’re getting out of this alive, I promise you that.”

His former client doesn’t know what he’s capable of either.

* * *

They spent the rest of the day in the car, hiding from security cameras and attempting to devise some sort of plan to track down the client. It was tense. Each plan one would offer, the other would refuse by pointing out flaws in logic and glaring issues that only grew as they became more and more frustrated. Kyungsoo’s only lead as to who the client was turned out to be a dead end and the only bit of information they had managed to gather was that they were in a much worse situation than they had ever imagined.

Sleep did not come easy that night.

Kyungsoo gave Baekhyun the backseat, choosing to recline the driver’s seat back and sleep that way. He knew he wasn’t going to sleep very well , the exhaustion eating at his bones be damned. If he slept in the driver’s seat, he could at least keep watch over the darkened alley they had decided to hide in for the night between his fits of sleep.

He did not sleep for a long, long while, long after Baekhyun’s breaths had evened out and all the stores along the street outside of the alley had turned off their lights. 

Thousands of different scenarios played out behind his eyelids. He imagined how they might be caught, perhaps by the police, by the other hitmen, maybe even the client themselves if they so choose. The sort of money the person behind Kyungsoo and Baekhyun’s contracts has can make even the most ridiculous possibilities a reality.

Kyungsoo hadn’t said much about his worries to Baekhyun; he was terrified enough as it was without Kyungsoo’s fears compounded on top. 

Baekhyun pretends to be handling their increasingly shitty situation well, he puts on a good act in the light of day. But he’s not very good at crying quietly, not in the silence of the car at night. Kyungsoo had listened to his little whimpers and wished with his entire being that he hadn’t taken that fucking job, had forced the client to come after him a different way and left Baekhyun out of it.

In lieu of reversing time and changing the past, Kyungsoo pulled out another blanket from the duffle bags they had relocated to the passenger seat and draped it over Baekhyun’s sleeping form.

Kyungsoo did fall asleep eventually. First, it was in bursts, a few seconds here, a minute or so there. He would close his eyes, wake in a start, and then check his watch to find that hardly any time had passed. Slowly, as he woke from each bout of dozing to no one with a gun to his temple or a knife to his throat, he slept for longer and longer stretches of time. 

He slept for too long.

“Kyungsoo! Kyungsoo, wake up!” Kyungsoo jerks awake to terrified whispering in his ear. “Don’t look awake though! Stay still and pretend you’re still sleeping!” 

Kyungsoo fell asleep with his head turned to the side. His neck is already aching, but he keeps himself still, only opening his eyes. He frowns in confusion when he sees Baekhyun right in front of him, kneeling in the footwell of the backseat. His hair is all fucked up, eyes wide as he looks from Kyungsoo’s face to the front of the car and back again. He’s chewing on his lower lip again. And up this close, even with the darkness and sleep clouding his eyes, Kyungsoo can see the beads of blood welling up along the torn skin.

It is only Baekhyun’s warning to stay still that keeps him from reaching over and wiping the blood away. Instead, he hisses, “What? What is it? What’s wrong?”

Baekhyun swallows. He slowly ducks back into the footwell, curling up in the shadows. “There’s someone out there,” he says from the darkness, voice soft and thin. Kyungsoo sucks in a breath, hands curling into fists as fear prickles beneath his skin. “I woke up to get a snack and I saw them at the mouth of the alley. I thought they were just drunk or something, but then they started walking towards us and I hid down here so they couldn’t see me.. They’ve been pacing outside the car for the past ten minutes.”

“Shit. Fuck!” Slowly, painstakingly slowly, Kyungsoo turns his head towards the windshield. Just as Baekhyun said, there is a figure pacing just a few feet ahead of the car, walking back and forth from one wall of the alley to the other. 

Kyungsoo can see the blue light of their phone in their hand. It illuminates their face just enough for Kyungsoo to see them look from the front of the car, likely the license plate he stole a few hours ago, and back to their phone. They must be worried about finding the right car, not wanting to ambush a drunk college student sleeping off a night out in their car and risk tipping Kyungsoo off that someone is out looking for him come the morning news.

It’s fortunate that they’ve been so unsure of themselves. If they had gone in with the blind confidence most other hitmen have when it comes to an ambush, Kyungsoo and Baekhyun would’ve been dead before either had a chance to scream. 

Too bad for the figure, a bounty of luck for Kyungsoo and Baekhyun. 

“Get down and stay down until I call for you,” Kyungsoo slowly reaches down and pulls his knife out from its sheath around his leg. Baekhyun nods silently and ducks back down into the footwells, shrouding himself in darkness and the blankets Kyungsoo gave him.

The person looks back to their phone. They shuffle forward a few steps, and then a few more. They attempt to peer through the windshield. When that doesn’t work, they go for the passenger window.

Kyungsoo settles his head just so that he can watch them from a thin gap between his eyelids, the picture of slumber except for the knife in his hand.

He waits as his would-be assailant slowly makes their way around the car, trying and failing to look in through the tinted windows. Kyungsoo promises to let Baekhyun pick which flavor of nutrigrain bar they eat in the morning as thanks for being such a private person. Finally, the other hitman comes up to the driver’s side door.

Kyungsoo takes a breath. And then he moves.

The door is whipped open, slamming into the man with as much force as Kyungsoo can muster in such a short burst. They yelp, then groan, stumbling back from the impact. Kyungsoo doesn’t give them a moment of space; he lunges out of the car, knife at the ready, and forces the assassin up against the wall of the alley with the tip of his knife pressed to their throat, straddling their lap with his knees on their hands to keep them still.

“Scream and I split you open from jaw to junk, am I understood?” 

The man stares at Kyungsoo with wide eyes, mouth shut tight to hold back those instinctual sounds of fear. Kyungsoo recognizes him, an up-and-coming colleague whose methodical approach to jobs he appreciated. It’s a bit sad that that is what is going to get him killed. He stays perfectly still as Kyungsoo strips him of any and all weapons. He looks so young, likely  _ is  _ so young, that Kyungsoo nearly hates himself for what’s about to happen. 

But this man knew just what risks he was taking when he decided to join in the hunt for Kyungsoo. He knew that there was a chance he’d actually come face-to-face with one of the deadliest hitmen in Seoul, and there was a very good chance he wouldn’t make it out of that encounter alive.

“How did you find me,” Kyungsoo interrogates the man. “Who else knows I’m here?”

The man shakes his head. He presses himself into the wall, attempting to put as much distance between himself and the point of Kyungsoo’s knife as possible. “N-no one! No one else! I was already in Daegu for a job and I saw the contract and knew that you wouldn’t stay in Seoul. You had to go somewhere, right? So I started walking around just looking for your car a-and I found it. I haven’t told anyone, I swear!” 

Kyungsoo nods. “Good.” He takes a deep breath and feels the anxiety draining out of his veins. He still has enough time to get the hell out of Daegu and find somewhere else to hide. Hell, maybe he’ll move to one of the rural villages and start a whole new life as a farmer. 

But first, he has to take care of his would-be murderer. The kid is terrified, would probably swear on his mother’s life to never breathe a word about seeing Kyungsoo and mean it. Kyungsoo can’t take that risk though, not when the stakes are so high. 

He adjusts his grip on the handle of the knife and whispers for the other man to close his eyes.

Then, the man’s phone begins to ring with a hidden number where it had landed on the ground beside them. Kyungsoo snarls, “Haven’t told anyone my ass, you fucking liar! You told the client! You goddamn piece of shit, everyone knows where I am now!”

The man whimpers and shakes, begging softly for forgiveness, offering to say that it was a false alarm, that he had been wrong. Tears leak out of his eyes. 

Kyungsoo is suddenly struck by the memory of Baekhyun refusing to beg for his life and feels a pulse of pride at the courage it must have taken him. It’s a strange thought, there and gone within a heartbeat, but he thinks it all the same. He forces himself back into the moment and tries to think of some sort of solution to the sudden bullseye painted to his back in neon red paint.

“Yes, yes you will. Keep them talking for as long as possible. Tell them that you found me and I blow your fucking brains out,” Kyungsoo says after a moment, nodding his head as he remembers how he got the address for that internet cafe in the first place. He calls for Baekhyun to get his laptop before reaching over and answering the phone. He settles the phone on the man’s shaking shoulder. 

The client’s voice is the same strange, distorted sound as it was when Kyungsoo spoke to him under the guise of Baekhyun’s contract. Kyungsoo scowls when he hears it. Baekhyun shivers, sitting a ways away with Kyungsoo’s laptop in his lap. Kyungsoo wonders if Baekhyun recognizes it at all, if there’s a certain word or phrase that reminds him of someone he knows. He’ll have to ask him later, once they’re back on the road and far, far away from Daegu.

Baekhyun follows Kyungsoo’s nearly silent instructions to set up the ancient dinosaur of a tracking program Kyungsoo had installed solely to track down this client. It’s a bit finicky, spaghetti code and the user-friendliness of most programs made in the nineties. It doesn’t use the internet though, something about physical cell towers.

Baekhyun is smart though. Just as the call ends, the client refusing to speak for another second now that they no longer think the other hitman is of any use to them, he looks up from the screen with a nervous smile and points to the coordinates and the general location of Busan that the program spit out at him. 

The call ends. The man doesn’t have any use for Kyungsoo either. “Baekhyun,” Kyungsoo whispers, “go wait for me in the car.”

Baekhyun nods. He gathers up the laptop and hurries back to the car with one last look at the man Kyungsoo has pinned, a thousand conflicting emotions flickering across his pretty face. This is something Kyungsoo will always feel bad about—not the killing, as it was necessary for both of them to continue living, but the bit of innocence that leaves Baekhyun in the moments before he ducks back into the backseat and closes the door behind him. He knows that Kyungsoo has to kill the man just as Kyungsoo does, but he has never had to rationalize murder before.

Kyungsoo will tell him to go back to sleep once they start driving again. Everything is easier to deal with after a good night of sleep.

To his credit, the hitman starts to struggle when he realizes death is barreling towards him. The sound of the car door closing drowns out his labored breathing as he tries to knock Kyungsoo off balance and gain some sort of leverage to free himself and get to his weapons. He’s looking for a way out, a fight that he might be able to drag out long enough to think of another escape route.

Kyungsoo just shoves the knife forward, through the soft skin of the man’s throat and then back out. He ends the fight before it can even begin and leaves the man to quickly bleed out, closing his eyes against the choked gurgling and desperate whimpers to stay alive.

He stays until the man finally goes still and quiet, one hand on the handle of the knife, the other on the man’s shoulder in a shallow show of comfort. 

The kid, because the other hitman looks like he’s fresh out of high school, didn’t deserve to die like this, in some back alley in Daegu. He should’ve just kept walking and left their car alone, he should be booking a train ticket back to Seoul. Instead, he got caught up in the client’s game and wound up on the other end of Kyungsoo’s knife. And so staying with him, whispering an apology as the light went out of his eyes, was the least Kyungsoo could do. 

The car is quiet when Kyungsoo slides back into the front seat. There is a new stash of weapons in the trunk, a new phone in his hand that no one will have reason to link to him until tomorrow night at the earliest. 

Kyungsoo sighs and leans forward, resting his forehead on the steering wheel. Killing has  _ never  _ been easy, especially not so up close and personal. He did it, and he’ll do it again, but it’s the moments like these that make him wish he had chosen a different fucking career.

“So,” Baekhyun’s voice comes from the backseat, soft and gentle, “Busan next, huh? You bring anything for the beach?”

A laugh bubbles out of Kyungsoo’s chest. It shocks him, blinking wide, startled eyes at the dashboard. He takes it for what it is, a peace offering, an absolution of this particular sin. Looking up into the rearview mirror, he smiles at Baekhyun, who is lying down with Kyungsoo’s laptop balanced on his lap, and shakes his head. “No, I don’t think I did. Sorry to disappoint.”

Baekhyun shrugs. His little half-smile is illuminated by the light of the computer screen. He’s shaken, deeply so, that much is evident by the tremble on his lip and the way his voice wavers. But he still smiles, still runs his mouth and cracks his stupid jokes. “I’ll get over it, I guess. At least we’re driving and not taking a train. Mind if I go back to sleep? I can stay up, if you want, but I’m just… That was a lot. I told myself to get ready the second I saw him at the end of the alley, and I thought I was when you told me to go back to the car. But then I heard him  _ die  _ and I just—I wasn’t ready.”

“You never are,” Kyungsoo sighs. Tiredness starts to seep into his body again, more mental than physical. He runs his fingers through his hair and shakes his head, laughing at his own flash of self-pity, “For those first few, and sometimes just randomly, you’re never ready no matter how much you prepare. And go back to sleep, Baek. Just sleep and try to forget this ever happened.”

* * *

As it turns out, Kyungsoo ends up nearly falling asleep at the wheel before they even make it out of Daegu. Baekhyun had yet to fall asleep when the car suddenly began veering off the road, so he was able to wake Kyungsoo up before anything unfortunate occurred, but they decided Kyungsoo was banned from driving until he’d had a good night’s sleep. 

Baekhyun takes over for him. Despite the fact that it is actually Baekhyun’s car that they’re using, Kyungsoo has to grit his teeth against a wave of anxiety that plagues him when Baekhyun puts his hands on the steering wheel. 

He refuses to lie down in the backseat, instead reclining the passenger seat all the way back and settling down as best he can there. If Baekhyun understands why, he doesn’t say anything, though he rolls his eyes at the way Kyungsoo has a white-knuckled grip on the door handle.

They drive in silence for a while, weaving through the streets of Daegu to throw off any potential followers. The route they’re taking to Busan is highlighted on a map laid over the passenger side of the dashboard. Kyungsoo yawns out a direction to turn left and snorts when Baekhyun jerks in surprise.

After that, Baekhyun looks over every few minutes, a quick glance out of the corner of his eye whenever they pass under a streetlight. He chews on his lower lip, then frowns, then pouts, before finally letting out a huff and coming to an idle stop at a stop sign.

“What,” Kyungsoo asks. 

Baekhyun’s eyebrows are pulled together when he turns, attempting to level Kyungsoo with a scowl that falls flat. “Aren’t you going to go to sleep? You need to rest.” Baekhyun’s tone is accusatory, like he thinks Kyungsoo is  _ trying  _ to stay awake. But he would give  _ anything  _ to just fall unconscious for an hour or two, disappearing into the blissful nothingness where his thoughts can’t reach him.

Exhausted as he is, Kyungsoo can’t help but notice how Baekhyun looks cute like this, grouchy with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders to ward off the late night chill.

Kyungsoo shrugs. He’s tired, but just not enough to fall asleep. The shock of nearly running off the road coupled with the memory of the corpse he left back in the alley keeps him awake. 

It’s been a long time since a hit kept him up at night. This wasn’t a hit though. What Kyungsoo did back in that alley was murder—murder done in self-defense and defense of another, innocent, person, but still murder. He would have thought that the justification would make it easier to cope with, not less. But he can’t forget the look on that kid’s face as the light went out of his eyes. The moment replays over and over in his mind like a broken record. 

The gravity of their situation sits on his chest, heavy, suffocating. The only reason he was able to fall asleep before was because he had all his focus on driving, not a single brain cell left to think about anything else. 

Now, with Baekhyun at the wheel, all he can do is think.

How powerful the client must be to control the search engines, how the other hitmen are closing in on them with every passing day, how he doomed Baekhyun to death by bringing him along and not just dropping him off at a bus stop. His thoughts chase each other around his skull, only interrupted by flashes of the moment that kid died in the alley. 

“Just have a lot on my mind.” He doesn’t tell Baekhyun any of that. He isn’t sure if he wants to and he just doesn’t know how. His mother always called him a man of few words; Kyungsoo thinks he’s just one of the poor souls who gets tongue-tied at the hint of genuine emotion. Vulnerability has never been one of his strong suits.

Baekhyun hums, obviously not satisfied, but he doesn’t push for more. He sighs, “Let me know if there’s anything you want to talk about then, I guess. Or if you want me to shut up.” He offers up a little smile and Kyungsoo snorts, maybe just a little fond.

The car rolls on past the stop sign to the sound of Baekhyun’s fingertips drumming against the steering wheel. 

The atmosphere in the car isn’t uncomfortable, the silence between them isn’t suffocating. There’s tension in the air, but Kyungsoo can blame that on the fact that they’re running for their lives. They eventually hit the back roads Kyungsoo marked out on the map and disappear into the darkness as they wind their way towards Busan and the client’s real location.

It’s just Kyungsoo, Baekhyun, and the moon.

Eventually, the silence has to break. And, if the past twenty-something hours have taught Kyungsoo anything, it’s that Baekhyun has to be the one to break it. He hums, the clock on the dashboard reads a quarter to two. “Since you’re not going to sleep any time soon, can you tell me more about your mom?” 

“What?” Kyungsoo turns to Baekhyun, unsure if he heard the other man correctly. His eyebrows are pulled together, head tilted to the side as he stares holes into the side of Baekhyun’s head. 

Baekhyun shrugs; his eyes are still on the road but Kyungsoo wouldn’t be surprised if he could feel the suspicion and confusion radiating from the passenger side of the car. “Your mom. I was just thinking about that picture I saw of her in your apartment and she just looked so...nice? I guess that’s the way I want to put it. There was a picture in your bag of the two of you together and she was looking at you and you could just see the love in her eyes. She just seemed like a real mom.”

Kyungsoo’s first instinct is to tell Baekhyun to mind his own fucking business and stop being such a nosey little shit. But he bites his tongue and lets out a deep, even breath through his nose as he thinks. There was nothing intrusive or rude in Baekhyun’s tone, and his question itself is innocent.

His question is heart-breaking once Kyungsoo thinks about it, actually. Baekhyun’s  _ real  _ question is about what it was like to have a  _ real  _ mom, and that implies that Baekhyun did not.

It’s been hinted at more than once that Baekhyun had a less than stellar childhood, that his homelife is nothing like the picture-perfect lie the Byuns feed to the media or the typical dysfunctional mess that is common in families with that much money and power. He was already curious about what exactly was going on behind closed doors to make going on the run with a hitman who attempted to kill him more appealing to Baekhyun than going home. 

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” Baekhyun says as the silence stretches on once more. He seems to hunch in on himself, lower lip disappearing between his teeth. “I was just curious, that’s all.”

Kyungsoo picks out his next words carefully. “Baekhyun, do you believe your parents don’t love you?”

It is a long, long time before either of them speak again. Kyungsoo curses his own curiosity, curses those questions that had been lingering in the back of his mind since he first accepted the contract for Baekhyun’s life. He wishes he hadn’t said anything, but it’s too late to take it back. And so, they sit in a strange sort of quiet, not tense but not calm, not companionable but not suffocating.

They wait for Baekhyun to answer or for Kyungsoo to fall asleep or for the world to end, stuck in a silent purgatory.

Finally, Baekhyun frees his lower lip from between his teeth, tongue sweeping over the torn skin to catch the little drops of blood. “I think they did when I was little,” he says. 

Kyungsoo has to tense his jaw to keep it from dropping open in shock. He turns his attention to the road that spans out endlessly in front of them and can only listen as Baekhyun speaks, voice forcibly calm. It still shakes though, is still tinged with hurt as the wounds Baekhyun’s been carrying his entire life rise to the surface.

“My parents loved me when I was a baby. I know they did. I’ve seen how they looked at me in pictures and my grandparents told me all about how I was my parent’s miracle. There are  _ so  _ many pictures of us as a family back then and we all just looked so happy. They both were already working at the Byun corporate empire by the time I came along, but my father’s parents were still alive so my mother and father were lower executives and had a lot more time for a child. My mother took an entire  _ year  _ off work after I was born to be with me,” Baekhyun’s jaw hardens, nearly baring his teeth out into the night. “Now? Now, they only give me attention when they’re breathing down my neck about propriety and the fucking bsuiness. When I was seventeen, my appendix ruptured and neither of my parents even bothered to come see me in the hospital.” 

Baekhyun stops then to let out a harsh laugh. His eyes are watery, reflecting the dashboard lights. “So, yeah, I think they loved me when I was really little, like at least until I was seven or eight. But then my father’s parents died and he just threw himself into running the company to cope with the loss. My mother followed after him and they stopped really having time for me. Just business, business, business, they still are that way, actually. By the time they remembered they had a son, I was thirteen and an angry little smartass who acted out constantly to try and make his parents pay attention. We fought constantly for years, about me inheriting the business, about how they treated me, about how I was never good enough for them, everything. And after awhile I think they just stopped loving me.”

Kyungsoo scrubs his face with his hands. Baekhyun takes a left, and the ticking of the blinker fills the empty silence.

Finally, Kyungsoo sighs, “Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Baekhyun nods, meeting Kyungsoo’s gaze in the dark car of the car,  _ “Fuck.”  _

None of the research Kyungsoo did ever turned up anything that even remotely resembles Baekhyun’s account of his childhood. The media called him a bit of a rebel, a flirt, a brat, a pain in the fucking ass. The man they described in those articles would be exactly that sort of person to make up some sob story to gain some sympathy; Baekhyun’s not that man though.

He’s not the man the boring, back page articles Kyungsoo read in shitty gossip magazines made him out to be and he’s most certainly not a liar.

Kyungsoo is not good at comforting others. He doesn’t have any words of wisdom. Honestly, the only words he can think of regarding Baekhyun’s piece of shit parents are not the sort of words one says to someone who is just barely keeping it together at the wheel of a moving vehicle. He’s all pretty sure that Baekhyun would purposefully crash the car if Kyungsoo even hinted at pitying him. He’s got too much pride for that.

So Kyungsoo doesn’t offer any comfort. Instead, he hands Baekhyun a napkin to dry his tears. And he talks. 

“So, you want to know more about my mom? Well, my dad died when I was four, accident at the construction site where he worked. I was so young that I don’t really remember him, but I know he was a good man, you know? I have yet to hear a single bad word about him from anyone that knew him. He was the love of her life and the one who made all the money because she wanted to stay home with me for as long as possible. The insurance settlement and money the construction company sent to keep our mouths shut was enough for us to get by for a year or two.  _ But _ she knew that she needed to find a job that would allow her to be with me, so she started her own food stand not far from our house.”

Kyungsoo closes his eyes and smiles at the memories of growing up inside that little stand that flash by him as he speaks. He still remembers the smells of the noodles his mother would serve to the customers, salty and savory and warm. As soon as he was able to help out, he became the waiter, his mother’s special helper—she sewed a patch onto his little apron that told everyone to call him that. He took orders and ran food, racking up tips from the few American tourists they would have because he was apparently the cutest thing to have ever existed.

It was an honest living, and not a bad one either. They made enough to live off of, and a little extra that was stashed away in a rainy day fund.

The car passes under a light. Baekhyun’s tears have dried up and a little smile is slowly starting to spread across his lips. Words pour out of Kyungsoo unbidden, his life story filling up the front seats while the moon shines down on their little silver four-door. “I don’t know how she did it. She went from being a happily-married housewife to a grieving widow and single mother overnight, but she never took it out on me. She put her heart and soul into taking care of me and being the best mom she could.”

“She sounds incredible. She had to have been so strong,” Baekhyun says, but there’s a sadness there, a hurt. Kyungsoo wouldn’t call it envy, because he doesn’t think Baekhyun has it in him to be that sort of bitter. He just sounds like he wishes he could have had a parent like that as well.

Kyungsoo can’t blame him, especially not after hearing Baekhyun talk about his own childhood, how he seemed to rush through it and skim over parts like it was too painful to really get into.

Kyungsoo nods slowly, putting emphasis on each bob of his head. He closes his eyes when the backs begin to sting with unshed tears the way they always do when he thinks about things like this. “She was the strongest woman I’ve ever met. Life was hard sometimes, but even when she was so fucking tired that she would collapse on her bed fully clothed, if I woke up in the middle of the night from a nightmare or because I puked, she would be up and ready to take care of me in a second. I spent my entire adult life up until she passed trying to return the favor.”

“Tell me one of your favorite stories about her? Please?”

Finally, Kyungsoo begins to feel tired. He yawns, losing himself in the safe, quiet, calm of the memories of his mother. The corpse in the alley can’t reach him there, neither can the stress of reality or the knowledge that there are roughly sixty well-trained people out to kill him. 

He yawns again and Baekhyun attempts to wave the request away, telling Kyungsoo to sleep if he’s tired even as he begins to chew on his bottom lip again. It has to sting, but he keeps going, shredding the soft skin there in a sad attempt to soothe himself. And so, Kyungsoo shifts to get more comfortable in the passenger seat and settles in for the night, “Sure, just one story. One time, when I was maybe ten years old, I failed my math test. And I mean  _ failed  _ it. I got maybe three questions correct out of ten? It was geometry, you know? I don’t know if you can tell by the fact that I chose murder-for-hire as a career, but I was not an academic kid.”

Baekhyun snorts. His giggles bubble out of him and brighten up the space, pretty brown eyes scrunched up in laughter.

“Everyone has their strong suits, Baekhyun, school just happened to not be one of mine. Especially math.” Kyungsoo considers throwing a protein bar at Baekhyun’s still laughing face, but he decides against it, not wanting to ruin all the work he put into cheering the other man up. “What I was saying was that I came home the day I received my results and I was crying before I walked through the front door because I was certain I was a dead man walking. And she was waiting for me at the kitchen table because she  _ knew _ the test results came out that day. My mom pushed me hard to do my best in school because she knew how lazy I was about it. I’d work my ass off with her in the food stand all day without complaint, but would whine like a baby about homework and studying. Drove her fucking crazy, because all she wanted was for me to have a better life than her.”

“What happened when you gave her your test,” Baekhyun asks. “I mean you’re still alive, so she obviously didn’t kill you. But what did she do? Even when my parents liked me they would still berate me for doing poorly in school—and I never made lower than a B!”

“When she saw me crying, she told me to come sit with her at the table and asked if I was crying about the test. I told her the truth and apologized over and over. She asked to see my test. I handed it over and she just stared at it for a long, long time. She looked at each problem I got wrong and all the teacher’s comments. Then she finally opened her mouth and I was sure she was going just let me fucking have it.” Kyungsoo has to stop then. 

He turns his gaze out to the road and takes a deep breath that shudders when he lets it out, biting down gently on his tongue to try and ease the tightness in his throat. He tries and fails to speak a few times before deciding to wait the sudden wave of heartache out.

Baekhyun makes a noise of confusion but doesn’t push. He waits quietly in the driver’s seat for Kyungsoo to collect himself, 

When he’s ready, the clock on the dashboard nearing three in the morning, he clears his throat. “And when she opened her mouth, I thought she was going to scream at me, but she didn’t. She just asked me if I had tried my absolute hardest. She asked me if I sat down for that test and put my best work on the paper. And I promised her that I had, because I did. I hated school, but I wanted to make her happy, so I tried as hard as I could. My mom put the test down and pulled me into a hug and told me that she had talked to my teachers and she knew that I was really struggling in math. She told me that she was proud of me for trying so hard and that she would never be mad at me over anything as long as I could promise her that I tried my best.”

The story ends there, and so Kyungsoo rests his head against the back of his seat and stares at the blanket wrapped around Baekhyun’s shoulders. He allows himself one, maybe two tears that he quickly wipes away with his own blanket. It’s been a long time since he allowed himself to go back over that memory even though it’s one of his favorites simply because he knew how badly it would hurt.

It is still so crazy to him that the softest, sweetest, happiest memories are the ones that hurt the most.

He wonders if Baekhyun feels the same way, if the memories of being his parent’s baby hurt more than the memories of the fights they must have had. He doesn’t ask.

“Thank you,” Baekhyun pulls up to a random, oddly placed stoplight. “You didn’t have to share any of that with me, but I really, really appreciate that you did. I’m not sure how to explain it, but it felt good to hear that. It hurt, but it felt good too.”

Kyungsoo hums in response. That burst of emotion seemed to take a lot out of him, leaving him yawning and fighting to keep his eyes open. He feels thoroughly tired, the sort of tired where it feels so satisfying when one finally lays their head on their pillow. He fights the pull of sleep though, just in case Baekhyun needs something again.

“You can go to sleep now, Kyungsoo, I’ll stop bothering you,” Baekhyun lets out a little self-deprecating laugh. 

“You’re not a bother.”

“Huh?” 

“You’re not a bother,” Kyungsoo repeats. “You’re annoying, but you’re not a bother or a burden or any shit your parents told you you were. You’re a good person, Baekhyun.”

Baekhyun doesn’t say anything to that, and the light emanating off the dashboard isn’t great, tinged blue and dim, but Kyungsoo manages to keep his eyes open long enough to get a good look at him and sees that he’s smiling to himself, something small and private. Kyungsoo can’t help but smile too, finally falling into a deep, restful sleep.

* * *

The sky is golden and blue when Kyungsoo awakes, disoriented but well-rested, in the passenger seat. The car isn’t moving and all the dashboard lights are off. A gentle breeze blows past his face; the smell of salt and sand makes him blink and grumble. He sits up slowly and gets his bearings back, rubbing at his eyes and looking around the front seat.

It takes a few long moments of stretching and yawning for him to realize that he’s alone in the front seat. His head snaps to where Baekhyun should be sitting, expecting to see the other man curled up and peacefully asleep. 

Panic jolts through him like lightning when all he sees is Baekhyun’s car keys and the blanket he’d been wrapped up in the night before. The driver’s side window is down, as is the passenger’s and the two windows in the backseat. Kyungsoo looks all around in search of Baekhyun; the world outside the car is all empty coastline, stretches of sand and water and seagulls. 

“Fuck!” Kyungsoo throws off his blanket and fights with his seatbelt. It’s highly unlikely another hitman took Baekhyun, as they would’ve just killed them both on sight. Even if they found Baekhyun far away from the car because the idiot decided to take a walk, they would’ve killed him and then tracked his footsteps back here to take Kyungsoo out as well. 

No one plays games when it comes to the sort of money the client is capable of offering. 

But that means someone else must have taken him without realizing who he is. A local gang or just some random serial killer could have seen him and thought he was a pretty boy and decided they wanted him. They could’ve dragged Baekhyun far, far away to torture him on some other stretch of beach and tossed his body into the ocean or loaded him up in their car and take him somewhere Kyungsoo will never be able to find him. 

Kyungsoo finally manages to get his seatbelt undone. His heart pounds in his chest at the idea of Baekhyun scared and hurt and alone, of his body floating in the ocean for the fish to nibble on. 

He knows that just a few days ago he was ready to put a bullet between Baekhyun’s eyes, but at least that would’ve been quick, painless. Baekhyun wouldn’t have known what was happening before it already happened. No normal person deserves a long, painful death. Especially not someone like Baekhyun.

Kyungsoo’s shoes hit sand as he throws open the passenger side door and launches himself into a sprint. His eyes are on the sand, searching for footprints or tire tracks, some sign of where Baekhyun might have gone. 

“Baekhyun,” he shouts. “Baekhyun, where are you?”

He makes it five steps, nearly losing his balance in the shifting sands. “I’m right here. Is something wrong?”

And there, sitting on a towel in the sand right in front of the car, is Baekhyun. He’s nibbling on a granola bar and glowing in the early morning. The wind has mussed his hair and he’s got sand all up his legs from where he’s digging his toes in the beach. There isn’t a scratch on him.

He’s okay.

Relief slams into Kyungsoo like the surf breaking on the shore. He shakes his head and reassures Baekhyun that he’s fine as he makes his way over to join him on the towel. They’re running for their lives; if Kyungsoo can’t see Baekhyun, he can’t help but assume the worst. A part of him wants to pull Baekhyun into his arms and berate him, tell him to never scare him like that again. 

But he doesn’t. Instead, he snatches the granola bar out of Baekhyun’s hands and takes a bite, smirking that little squawk of outrage he gets in response. Out of the corner of his eye, he takes in the way Baekhyun is fighting a smile, whining for Kyungsoo to give back the granola bar. He lets that soothe the last bits of worry in his chest. Baekhyun is perfectly fine, they both are.

Kyungsoo just forgot how fucking debilitating it is to care about someone.

“Where are we, precisely?” Kyungsoo passes the granola bar back to Baekhyun before pulling off his own socks and shoes and feet in the cool sand. 

“A beach, duh.” Baekhyun giggles when Kyungsoo levels him with a scowl. “We made it to Busan at about five in the morning and I didn’t know where else to go. I found this place when I was younger on a school trip and I know it’s pretty empty most days so I figured it would be a good place to pass the time while I waited for you to wake up. It’s so calm here, you know? The waves and the sun and wind.”

It is calm here, peaceful. Kyungsoo closes his eyes and feels the sea breeze on his face, listens to the waves as they crash against the shore and seagulls as they fly around high above their heads, and can almost forget why they’re here in the first place.

They share the granola bar, and then another. It’s not a very glamorous breakfast, but it does what it’s supposed to. The sky turns blue and the ocean sparkles with the morning sun.

Eventually, around the eight o’clock according to the clock on the phone Kyungsoo took from that kid in the alley, Baekhyun gets tired of sitting and stands up, taking off towards the shore. He kicks up sand and surf as he runs along the coast. Kyungsoo laughs, unable to keep the smile on his face.

“Look what I found,” Baekhyun calls. He looks up from where he’d dropped into a crouch and started digging through the wet sand with a seashell in his hand. “I found two! One for you and one for me!”

A wave comes in and pools around his feet. His shriek of surprise and the little dance he does to try and get away from the cold sends Kyungsoo flat on his back in a roar of laughter.

Baekhyun comes running back up the beach with a pout on his lips. “Don’t laugh at me! It was fucking cold!”

Kyungsoo doesn’t know why, but the absolute indignation on Baekhyun’s face makes him laugh even harder. He laughs and laughs until tears are running down his cheeks; Baekhyun whines and tries to shake him out of it, his cheeks pink with embarrassment. It’s really not that funny, but Kyungsoo just can’t stop.

“You’re a bully,” Baekhyun whines in his ear. “See if I ever get you a seashell again!”

“Oh no, please, don’t deprive me of your hard-earned seashells.” Baekhyun pretends that he doesn’t appreciate the sarcasm, but his lips are twitching against a smile when Kyungsoo looks at him. “I don’t know how I’ll ever survive without them.” He takes the little shove Baekhyun directs to his shoulder with a grin. Kyungsoo’s feet are buried in sand up past his ankles in revenge, toes wiggling against the grit.

Later, after Kyungsoo finally catches his breath, Baekhyun pulls him to sit up. Then, with the morning slowly crawling by, Baekhyun braces his elbows on his knees and rests his face in his palms and turns to Kyungsoo with a soft, pensive gaze. “You needed that, didn’t you?”

Kyungsoo nods. He offers a small smile and frees his feet from the sand. They both needed that, just those few moments of laughter free of the crushing fear that’s been biting at their heels. 

Baekhyun smiles at him, and something about the way he looks, hair disheveled and grains of sand stuck to his cheeks, makes Kyungsoo’s heart skip a beat. He shoves that feeling away to eviscerate later and turns his gaze back out to the ocean.

Baekhyun’s head is a warm, heavy weight on his shoulder. Kyungsoo reaches for the other man’s hand, the impulse so sudden he can’t squash it, and squeezes. Baekhyun squeezes back.

The simple comfort of having someone close.

“We’re going to go track down that address today. Naver said that address is a high rise of some sort,” Kyungsoo says. “Maybe a business, maybe an office. If we’re lucky, you’ll recognize it and know who owns it and we’ll have the client’s identity. If not, then today we’ll rest and watch the building, sleep as much as possible, and tonight we’ll break into it to search for clues.”

“But what if someone’s waiting for us there? What if they already know we’re in Busan and it’s a trap?”

Kyungsoo’s already considered that possibility. This client is powerful and well-connected and  _ smart.  _ Kyungsoo wouldn’t put it past them to have hitmen ready and waiting for them. And that terrifies him to the core, the idea that he could be leading the two of them straight to their deaths.

He sighs. “That’s a chance we have to take. We don’t have any other leads. I’ll take point. I’ll have the weapons, though I’d like it if you would at least take a handgun to defend yourself. We’re a team. Long-haul. I’m not going to use you as a shield.”

Baekhyun nods, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “I knew that, it’s just scary to think about. I’m glad you aren’t trying to leave me behind though.”

“I couldn’t. There’s too big of a risk that someone would find the car and take you hostage to wait for me. If they don’t just start shooting first and hope I'm the person they’re seeing through the tint on the windows. You’re in danger no matter what, but at least if you’re with me I know how much danger you’re in.”

“That makes sense, I guess,” Baekhyun says. He rubs grains of sand between the fingers of his free hand.

“But Baekhyun?”

“Yeah?”

Kyungsoo takes in a deep breath as he imagines the worst possible scenario, blood splattered across walls and floors, the thud of a body falling, desperate whimpers of pain in his ears as they both bleed out. He squeezes Baekhyun’s hand again. “If it  _ is  _ a trap and I get hurt,” he starts, “and I mean if I get shot or stabbed and I can’t keep up—you take the car keys and you  _ run.  _ You leave me behind. They’ll leave you alone if you’re not with me.”

“Soo,” Baekhyun shakes his head. His eyes are wide, confused, terrified. “Soo, no. We’re a team, you just said so yourself!”

Kyungsoo holds Baekhyun’s gaze, so serious and solemn it nearly suffocates them both. “They’re after me, Baekhyun. We’re a team, but that doesn’t mean we die for each other. It means we do what we can, but if it’s obvious that it’s hopeless, we save ourselves.”

And that’s not really true. If this turns out to be a trap and Baekhyun gets hurt, Kyungsoo isn’t sure if he’d be able to leave him behind if there was any chance of survival. Kyungsoo is strong though, he could haul the little shit for a long, long time with little trouble. He could save Baekhyun without endangering himself too much.

“You understand me, Baekhyun? If I can’t keep up, you leave without me. J-just keep my stuff, the pictures of my mom. Just keep that stuff safe. Don’t argue with me, just nod your head and tell me you understand.” Kyungsoo looks back out at the ocean and lets out a slow, shaky breath.

Baekhyun is quiet for a long time, his hand tight around Kyungsoo’s. He might be crying. Kyungsoo isn’t sure and doesn’t want to know. All he cares about is that Baekhyun heeds the warning and doesn’t try to play hero in the event that they get caught. Baekhyun keeps his head on Kyungsoo’s shoulder. He scoots in closer. 

The sound of the sea surrounds them, peaceful even though they are anything but. Kyungsoo hates himself for dragging Baekhyun into this, for tearing at the soft heart of him. He waits for a fight, an argument loud enough to scare off the seagulls.

Then, softly, hoarsely, like he’s trying to hold back tears, “I understand.”

* * *

The address Kyungsoo’s tracking software had identified leads them to a high-rise office building in the Busanjin district of Busan. It was an exceptionally plain office building, blending into the other skyscrapers in the district. They had actually passed by it on the first drive down the street because there was nothing to distinguish it from the skyscrapers beside it. 

When they finally realized the building was what they were looking for, they pulled into the parking lot of an abandoned warehouse a few blocks away and walked back to the street for an informal stakeout, faces covered with masks and black baseball caps turned backwards to appear younger, like some shitty college boys goofing off around town. Kyungsoo had his mother’s knife strapped in its usual holster, and Baekhyun had a small can of bear mace in the front pocket of his sweatshirt.

The first thing Kyungsoo noticed about the building was that it lacked any sort of signage as to who owned it or what businesses were housed inside. The only information available were the hours of operation on the doors, and even those were printed so small that Baekhyun couldn’t read them until he had managed to meander his way to a food stand on the sidewalk nearby. 

And even then he wasn’t able to see any clue as to who might own the building. He returned to Kyungsoo unsure if it was even the right place, asking if the software could’ve given them the wrong GPS coordinates or if the client had actually called from one of the more flashy establishments a few streets over and it was the address that had gotten incorrect.

According to Baekhyun, most people in his world with anywhere near that sort of money and power had an ego that needed feeding; they weren’t the type for nondescript office buildings that easily settled back into the scenery. And if the problem at hand was a part of Baekhyun’s world, underhanded and serpentine but still wholly legal, he might have had a point.

But they, and the client, were neck-deep in Kyungsoo’s world. It pays to be discreet.

The posted hours of operation said that the building closes at six, though it likely isn’t empty until eight or nine given the way people in the corporate world operate, meaning it wouldn’t be safe to enter until ten-thirty at the very earliest. It was different from any stakeout Kyungsoo had ever done before in the sense that he had nowhere from which to actually hold the stakeout. The car was parked too far away to see the building and Kyungsoo didn’t feel safe loitering out in public. They had to keep moving, blending into the crowd and attracting as little attention to themselves as possible.

And so, Baekhyun and Kyungsoo spent the entire day watching the building. Baekhyun watched for anyone he recognized that would help identify the owner of the building, Kyungsoo kept an eye out for anything that seemed out of place or connected to his line of work.

When they did have to leave, they sat in the car nibbling on the snacks Baekhyun had picked up at a convenience store on the way to Busan and taking catnaps. They eventually managed to find a space in a parking garage across the street from the building. All that meant was that they didn’t have to leave the car to walk anywhere.

It would’ve been mind-numbingly boring alone, but Kyungsoo had Baekhyun for company, and for some unholy reason the little shit decided that the best way to pass the time was to talk. Incessantly. About anything and everything that crossed his mind. He only ever ran out of things to say if his mouth was full or if he was passed out in the backseat.

It wasn’t as horrible as Kyungsoo thought it would be. 

After years of being alone, Kyungsoo decided he didn’t hate having someone there to talk to all the time. He learned that Baekhyun’s favorite idol group was Girls’ Generation and that he can hit Taeyeon’s high notes in Genie nearly as well as the woman herself, nearly choking on his water at the way the tendons in Baekhyun’s neck stood out as he reached for the notes. Kyungsoo allowed himself to be bullied into covering one of his favorite songs from high school and pretended not to blush at the praise Baekhyun showered him in afterwards. They bickered about the usefulness of a college degree and if there was life in outer space. Kyungsoo and Baekhyun sat in the backseat together, blankets over their laps, and watched an episode or two of one of the dramas Kyungsoo’s mother loved and had him download onto a flash drive so she could watch them whenever she wanted.

Kyungsoo looks over at Baekhyun as the credits roll and the streetlights come on. “I can’t believe we spent the entire day like this.”

“Well, what else were we supposed to do?”

Kyungsoo shrugs. It’s a fair question. Their situation hasn’t left them with much to do in the way of entertainment. It’s just such a surreal thing to experience, spending a day watching dramas in the backseat of a semi-stolen car with the true owner of said car while keeping an eye on an office building that may or may not hold the person responsible for putting out contracts on both their lives. Kyungsoo sighs under his breath as he realizes that there isn’t a single thing about their predicament that isn’t surreal.

Baekhyun nudges Kyungsoo in the ribs with an elbow, “Do you think we have time for another episode?”

The clock reads half past six and a steady stream of people are exiting the building across the street, a day having passed with absolutely nothing to show for it. He lets out a curse and reaches over to close the laptop. “No, not right now,” he says, “I want you to start watching those doors in case you recognize anyone. I wanted you to start a little before six, but time got away from us.”

“Sorry,” Baekhyun grimaces in an apology that Kyungsoo dismisses with a wave of his hand. 

It was a good show and they have both been so stressed that they were bound to latch onto any form of escapism offered. Even more, the loss of time isn’t likely that much of a hindrance. Anyone Baekhyun could possibly recognize is not someone who leaves work on time. The sort of people that manage to claw their way to the top of the corporate ladder are workaholics, people who come in early and stay late. 

They watch people exit the building for a good hour, and it is one of the most boring hours of Kyungsoo’s life. He’s a patient man, but it feels a lot like watching paint dry or grass grow. 

Another episode of the drama probably wouldn’t have hurt in retrospect, as Baekhyun says that even the obvious higher-ups that come out of the building long after sunset are complete strangers. He becomes more and more frustrated each time another executive comes out of the double doors with one phone pressed to their ear and another in their hands, turning back to Kyungsoo to shake his head and frown. 

Kyungsoo attempts to comfort him as best he can. He reaches over and squeezes Baekhyun’s shoulder with a soft apology, “I shouldn’t have asked this of you. It’s impossible to identify someone in the dark of night when you only have a few minutes to look at them illuminated by the streetlights and neon store signs. And even if it were daylight, we’re across the street and a story up in a parking garage.”

Baekhyun nods, but he’s grumbling. He stares out the windshield with a scowl, eyebrows drawn together and nose crinkled in irritation. “I know that. I-I get it, Kyungsoo, I know.” 

A few more workers trickle out into the night, staggering towards the bus stop at the corner. Baekhyun lets out a huff. “I just—this was my time to be useful, you know? I would recognize someone and know who the building belongs to and we’d have our client and then half of our problems would be solved because then we could find them and get them to take down the hit on you. This was my time to shine and I feel like I’m majorly fucking blowing it.”

“Baekhyun.” Kyungsoo runs his hands through his hair as he struggles for words. “Was I hoping that you would see this building or one of the workers and be able to give me more information regarding the client and their motivation for all this? Yes, undoubtedly. But I’m not upset with you because that didn’t happen. We were going to have to break into that building regardless of whether you recognized someone or not. It’s got information we need, about the client, about who they are and where they are and why they want me dead.”

Baekhyun seems to deflate at that, nodding softly and resting his chin on the dashboard. Kyungsoo leans forward to get a better look at Baekhyun’s face. He shakes his head when he sees the other man chewing on his bottom lip again. 

They aren’t nearly close enough for Kyungsoo to reach over and thumb it out from between his teeth, though he certainly has to fight back the urge to. And so, he taps the dashboard next to Baekhyun’s chin instead. “Knock it off before you tear your lip open again. Absolutely none of this is your fault, so don’t take it out on yourself. And if you’re really so caught up on being useful, then believe me when I say you’ve been incredibly useful by keeping me sane over the past few days.”

“Yeah? You mean it?” Kyungsoo watches as Baekhyun turns his head to look at him, cheek squished against the dashboard instead of his chin. His lower lip is pulled out from between his teeth as a silly, prideful smile spreads across his face.

Kyungsoo rolls his eyes, “Yes. I guess you’ve grown on me, you little shit.” He attempts to wave off the stupid smile on Baekhyun’s face and stuff the sudden swell of vulnerability in his chest back down to the recesses of his mind where it belongs.

Judging by the way Baekhyun doesn’t stop smiling at him, eyes genuine and sparkling even in the darkness of the car, it doesn’t work.

Kyungsoo does his best to ignore the other man and turns his focus towards starting a new episode of the drama to pass the time until they can start getting ready for Baekhyun’s first breaking-and-entering.

It isn’t until ten o’clock that Kyungsoo begins getting all the necessary materials they’ll need to infiltrate the office building and make their way up to the executives’ offices. He slides his kitchen knife into its sheath and ties his M9 holster around his waist. He would prefer some heavier weaponry, but he’s pretty sure the building they’re about to break into has damn good security and he needs to be as discreet as possible.

As much as Kyungsoo would like to find the client tonight and smash their fucking face in, he wants any meeting with the client to be on his terms, the environment under his control. The last thing he needs is to give the client any other advantages. This mission is solely to gather information to make that possible.

Still, it pays to be prepared. He manages to get a holster and a Glock 26 around one of Baekhyun’s surprisingly thick thighs after a bit of coaxing, cajoling, and a crash course on how to carry and use a handgun. Mostly, just turn off the safety, point, pull the trigger, and then run like hell in the opposite direction of whatever it is one is shooting at. Baekhyun is not a fan of carrying a handgun, but Kyungsoo’s not about to let him walk into what could be an ambush without something to protect himself. 

He asks about a knife instead; Kyungsoo turns that down without a second thought. Kyungsoo can see Baekhyun being overpowered and stabbed with his own knife much too easily. He needs something long-range to give him space to think and run for his life.

After they’re both outfitted with some protection and a few of the bigger handguns are stashed into an opaque plastic bag for Baekhyun to bring inside, something that won’t be painfully obvious to the casual onlooker as a walking arsenal, Kyungsoo grabs a flash drive filled to the brim with state of the art hacking software, and another, empty, flash drive in case he comes across any data he may want to download.

Then he takes hold of Baekhyun’s hand and leads him across the street to the office building. “We’re a couple from Gwangju on vacation. We’re trying to get to a specific beach but lost our way and need directions. Hopefully anyone we come across will be so homophobic they won’t notice that you’re wearing a coat down to your knees and waddling like a penguin because you don’t know how to walk with a thigh holster.”

“It’s uncomfortable,” Baekhyun hisses. 

“It’s going to be the easiest holster for you to use. You tend to duck when you get scared and that means you’d be fucked trying to get a gun from around your waist. I’m trying to keep you alive, you little shit.” Kyungsoo squeezes his hand just a bit too tight in retaliation and smirks at the quiet curse Baekhyun lets out.

He leaves Baekhyun outside of the building with an order to act frustrated and pouty. Kyungsoo doesn’t check to make sure Baekhyun listens before stepping into the lobby; frustrated and pouty is one of Baekhyun’s natural states of being and Kyungsoo has absolutely no doubt that he’ll convince any onlooker with ease.

He shifts his focus instead to the security guard sitting at the front desk surrounded by monitors. They appear to be security camera feeds and Kyungsoo blesses his luck. He was sure they were going to have to sneak around the building to find the security room, but apparently this building isn’t nearly as well-protected as he thought. That points to arrogance or naivety from whoever was in charge of security.

The idea that there could be more than one person acting as the client starts to seem even more plausible. No one who would put their main security controls at the front desk, only protected by a single security guard, would have the cunning to nearly trap Kyungsoo the way they did at the fundraising event.

“We’re closed,” the security guard barks, scowling at Kyungsoo before the door can even fully close behind him. 

“Really? I’m so sorry, that’s my bad. I didn’t see any hours posted on the door so I just assumed this was open all day, some sort of department store or something.” Kyungsoo holds up his hands in surrender and starts walking backwards. He fixes his appearance into that of someone embarrassed and successfully chastised. He makes himself look young and uncertain, someone easily pitied. Before he reaches the door, he stops and grimaces. “Before I go, could I just ask you for some directions?”

The security softens for a moment. “Directions? You lost, kid?”

Kyungsoo nods and forces himself to blush, pushing his thick-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose. He laughs, a self-deprecating chuckle, “Yeah. My boyfriend, the guy waiting outside, is Chinese and he came to see me for three weeks. And he  _ really  _ wanted to visit this one beach he heard about from his friends who have studied abroad here. They didn’t give him any directions as to where it is, and I’m from Gwangju so I have no idea where anything is here. I’ve already checked Naver maps but there are just  _ so many  _ beaches that I don’t know which one is the right one.”

There’s a few moments of tense silence as the guard thinks. Kyungsoo keeps his body loose and relaxed, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet to sell that young, innocent persona ever further. He offers the guard a smile and plans the best ways to incapacitate him. 

He’ll have to be quick, taking him out before he has a chance to call for help or make some sort of scene that draws the attention of any of the other possible security guards. Choking him out would be good, though that’s likely to accidentally kill him or leave lasting permanent damage. A blow to the head could work as well, and Kyungsoo scans the desk for something heavy enough to knock the guard unconscious but not so heavy that it'll do anything truly hurtful.

“Describe the beach for me and I’ll see if I know it. I’m not much of a beach-goer anymore, but I spent most of my youth out there with the waves, so I might know where your...boyfriend is wanting to go,” the security guard sighs. 

Kyungsoo feels a sudden wave of nerves. He’s not one for undercover work and he worries that the guard is seeing right through him. He should have had Baekhyun enter with him, let him take point on the acting.

“Thank you so much! Here, let me go get him. He only speaks Chinese so I’ll have him tell me what he knows about the beach and I’ll translate it for you.” Kyungsoo has never heard himself sound so fucking fake in his entire life. He doesn’t know why he went with entering through the front door over sneaking in through a window—probably because it was something no one would ever expect from him. He leans back to open the door and beckons Baekhyun inside in Mandarin, telling him about the newest addition to their act.

Baekhyun, for all that he’s an annoying pain in the ass, is startlingly intelligent, eyes widening for just a moment before he nods and answers back in near perfect Mandarin. He is quick to step into the lobby and bows in the security guard’s direction. “You’re a fucking idiot,” Baekhyun tells Kyungsoo in the sweetest of voices. 

Kyungsoo breathes out a silent sigh of relief. He had been cursing himself for deciding to make Baekhyun Chinese from the moment he said, just wanting some reason for Baekhyun to keep his mouth shut. He knew that Baekhyun had to know  _ some  _ Mandarin for his parents’ company, so it wasn’t as though he was talking himself into a corner, but he didn’t know just how much or how well the other man could speak. 

The security guard very obviously doesn’t understand a word of Mandarin. He sits silently as Kyungsoo and Baekhyun pretend to discuss a beach. “I needed to make sure you couldn’t talk and potentially ruin this for us,” Kyungsoo takes Baekhyun’s hand and leads him up to the front desk. 

Baekhyun nods, playing along even as he pinches Kyungsoo’s palm with his strangely sharp nails. “So you decided to nearly ruin it instead? What if I couldn’t speak Chinese, huh? We would have been absolutely screwed. You should have just said that I’m shy and had me whisper in your ear. The hoodie and mask covering my face would’ve made it believable.”

“Well, I didn’t think of that. I panicked. Just be happy that it all worked out, alright?” Kyungsoo turns to the guard, “He says that it’s a pretty small beach. It’s supposed to be very remote and quiet in comparison to the others. Something about camping?”

The security guard’s eyes light up in recognition. “Oh, Imrang beach? I know where that is! It’s pretty far from here, so you should wait until tomorrow to really experience it, but I can give you directions now.” He turns to the one monitor not filled with a security feed and pulls up Naver maps. The directions come up in seconds. “So, first you’re going to want to—” 

Kyungsoo sucks in a breath and grimaces again. “I hate to be a bother, but could I come around and write the directions down? I’ve got a horrible memory and would probably just end up here again in the morning if I tried to remember the directions without writing them down. If not, I totally understand.”

There are a few moments of the security guard hemming and hawing as he thinks, scrutinizing Kyungsoo and Baekhyun from behind his fortress of monitors. Kyungsoo knows that it’s a shot in the dark asking, as the security guard isn’t likely to let a stranger have an open, unimpeded view of the security feeds. It’s worth a shot though, people are surprising creatures sometimes.

“Sure. Let me get you a pen and paper,” the guard concedes and waves Kyungsoo around the desk.

He goes with a friendly smile, coming up behind the guard who has bent down to rifle through his desk drawers. 

Kyungsoo hands reach out and grab the landline phone off the desk before slamming it into the back of the guard’s skull. He drops in an instant and Kyungsoo has to scramble to catch him before he brains himself on the metal drawer of the desk. “Shit, shit, shit,” Kyungsoo hisses, “I hit him too hard.”

Baekhyun rounds the desk to help Kyungsoo lay the guard out on the floor, checking the back of his head for any obvious injuries. “He’s breathing, Kyungsoo,” Baekhyun gently nudges their shoulders together. “He’s just unconscious, maybe concussed. He’ll wake up with a horrible headache, go to the doctor, and make a full recovery. I’m actually surprised you didn’t kill him. I’m glad you didn’t, but surprised.”

“There was no real reason to.” Kyungsoo digs the guard’s phone, keys, security pass, and wallet out from his pockets. “It wasn’t like he had a gun to your head. He was just a man doing his job. A  _ good  _ man doing his job. I meant it when I said I don’t like killing. The kid in Daegu, that was life or death, you know? Him or us. This was...just get him out of the way temporarily.” 

Baekhyun hums. He pulls down his face mask so Kyungsoo can see him smiling. “A hitman with a heart. Ow! No hitting!”

Kyungsoo stands, picking up the bag of supplies as he goes. “For that, you can drag him into the broom closet over there yourself.” Baekhyun whines but gives in when Kyungsoo ignores him, instead focusing on destroying the building's security system.

He sets the bag on the desk and digs out the flash drives. He plugs one into the desktop connected to the security monitors and watches as the programs on his flash drives absolutely fry the hard drive. Before it’s all destroyed, Kyungsoo checks the security monitors and lets out a sigh of relief when he sees that there aren’t any other security guards wandering the halls.

It’s the exact opposite of what he had expected, of what would make logical sense. Kyungsoo decides that the person that owns this building is not only arrogant and naive, but _ young.  _ Easily manipulated by someone with more wisdom and power to be the one acting as the client, the one making themselves a target.

Once the security guard is successfully hidden in the broom closet not far from the front desk, Baekhyun uses the keys Kyungsoo had lifted off of him to lock the front doors and shut off the lights. To an outsider, it looks like the building is well and truly closed for the night.

The desktop is completely unresponsive after Kyungsoo pulls the flash drive out. He grins. Not only did that effectively shut down the security cameras, it should have also erased all footage that had been collected since the last external back-up, which, considering that whoever owns this building doesn’t seem to care much about security, was likely never. Once he’s done wiping the desk and door clean of their prints, it will be as though they were never here.

“Get ready for a hell of a workout,” Kyungsoo says as he ushers Baekhyun through the door that leads to the seemingly endless staircase. Baekhyun stares up at the floors above them in resignation and defeat. Kyungsoo grins and squeezes his hand, adrenaline from killing the security guard flooding his veins. “We’ve got twenty flights of stairs ahead of us. Fucking executives always wanting the top floors.”

To neither of their surprise, Baekhyun is whining before they reach the fourth floor. “Why can’t we just take the elevator?”

“Elevators don’t have multiple exits like staircases. What if someone decided to send us plummeting to our deaths,” Kyungsoo is already on the fifth floor. He takes a sick sense of joy in the way Baekhyun whines and drags himself up the stairs. He knows it’s wrong; Kyungsoo has been forced to be ridiculously in shape by way of his career, whereas Baekhyun, while still fit, was never meant to be in this sort of situation. But he just can’t help himself. He lets himself laugh at Baekhyun’s expense for another floor before taking pity on his tired, sluggish form. “We’ll rest on the seventh floor, Baek, how does that sound?”

“Fuck you,” Baekhyun pants, sweat beading along his hairline. “But also yes, please. I haven’t done this much cardio since high school.”

Kyungsoo grins. “So, last week?” 

The answering sputtered slew of curses is worth the way Baekhyun suddenly gains a second wind and starts sprinting up the stairs, threatening to shove Kyungsoo down them if he catches him. “Shut up! You’re not even five years older than me!”

They race up to the landing of the seventh floor. By the time they reach it, they’re both out of breath and willing to call a truce. Five minutes later sees them a bit less winded and staring back up the steps. They rest again at the twelfth floor, and then the seventeenth. Rounding the landing of the eighteenth floor, Kyungsoo is drenched in sweat, gasping for air, and wondering if taking the elevator wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

The door leading to the twentieth floor is a solid, heavy metal door. It doesn’t open with a simple push. Instead, Kyungsoo has to brace his shoulder against it and shove with all his weight. It makes a ridiculous amount of noise, so much that Kyungsoo has to pray that the floor is empty because there is no way that anyone else on the floor wouldn’t have heard it. 

“Fuck,” Baekhyun whispers. Kyungsoo grunts in agreement, gritting his teeth as he eases the door open all the way, ready to be met with an alarm blaring or some random executive shouting in angered fear.

Luck seems to be on his side once more. He and Baekhyun step out onto a floor filled with huge offices, all with walls made entirely of windows, and do not see a single soul. 

Kyungsoo rolls his shoulders. He shakes out some of the tension in his body before asking Baekhyun to lead him to the CEO’s office. They decided on the way up to start with the CEO and then work their way down through the levels of executives. 

It’s nearly impossible, in Kyungsoo’s mind, for the client to be one singular person pulling all these strings. It’s a group, two, maybe three or four of the most powerful people living in the space where Baekhyun and Kyungsoo’s worlds overlap. Baekhyun is pretty certain that the vice president of the company is as low as the other parties masquerading behind the guise of Kyungsoo’s client would have gone to recruit another member, even if all they were needed for was to be a mouthpiece. Kyungsoo believes him wholeheartedly.

Baekhyun seems to have an uncanny sense of office organization, darting through the hallways with his eyebrows pulled together and focused frown on his face. It doesn’t take him long to find a pattern that the further north they go, the more important the people. He’s a bit like a bloodhound, letting out a little bark of laughter once he recognizes the pattern and dropping his head down to charge north.

Kyungsoo snorts. Fengshui. He would have never expected for  _ that  _ particular subject to ever come in handy.

There are labels next to every office door, little placards with the name and title of the executive. Baekhyun reads them aloud as he passes by. “These names are so familiar,” he stops to stare long and hard at the placard reading  _ Lee Taemin, CFO.  _ “I know them, I just don’t know  _ where  _ I know them from.”

“Do you think you’ll recognize the CEO’s name?”

Baekhyun nods. “I know every CEO of every company my parents do business with. I may be a failure, but at least I know that much about the business.” 

“You’re not a failure,” Kyungsoo brushes their arms together with a weak smile. 

Baekhyun smiles back, and then stumbles into a large potted plant, tripping over the ceramic pot and accidentally throwing all his weight against it as he overbalances. The large, tree-like plant falls over and spills dirt onto the floor. “Fuck, the ficus!” He wheezes as he tries to lift it back into place, “This thing is so fucking heavy! What’s the soil made of? Rocks?

“Just leave it. Fingerprints, remember?” Kyungsoo squints to try and read the little golden bit of metal affixed to the wall beside the door at the very end of the hall. That office is the only one without windows for walls. It’s more sensible, less ostentatious. Kyungsoo doesn’t know much about the life of these sorts of people, more concerned with their deaths, but he knows CEOs tend to be the  _ most  _ ostentatious people of the entire company. This one seems strangely private. In fact, they’re so private that they don’t even have their name on the placard, just their title.

Baekhyun looks back at Kyungsoo with wide, unsure eyes as they come to a stop in front of the door. He pulls two pairs of gloves out of the bag and hands one to Kyungsoo. “You want me to go first?” 

Kyungsoo shakes his head and nudges Baekhyun’s shoulder with his own, gently pushing the other man behind him as he begins to turn the door handle. Not a chance in hell will he ever send Baekhyun into an unknown room first. The barrel of his gun takes point instead, guiding Kyungsoo’s gaze around the office as he scrutinizes each and every shadow. He doesn’t let Baekhyun into the room until he has thoroughly and completely scoured the darkness for any sign of life. 

“Why didn’t you just turn on the light,” Baekhyun asks. He does just that as he walks past Kyungsoo into the office, flipping the light switch next to the door with his elbow. “That would’ve saved you some time.”

“I didn’t want to risk being ambushed while I fumbled for the light switch.” Kyungsoo holds his head high, careful to keep his voice sure and unembarrassed.

Baekhyun’s expression tells him exactly how little the other man believes him. He chooses to let Kyungsoo keep his dignity though, instead starting to slowly walk the perimeter of the office. “It’s so weird,” he says. “There’s  _ nothing  _ that says whose office this is or what company the building belongs to. The walls are bare, there aren’t any papers out on the desk or anything unique on the bookshelves. If it weren’t for the mountain of coffee stirrers and sugar packets on top of the minifridge and the microwave burrito wrappers in the trash can, I would almost say that no one's even using this office at all.”

“They might have known we would eventually catch up to them if we made it out of Seoul and intentionally scrubbed the building clean. They did it to the Naver searches.” Kyungsoo locks the door behind them as a precaution and joins Baekhyun in his slow, methodical examination of the office. “Or maybe it’s a new CEO? Someone with a lot of power but no real standing would be an easy target for those looking for a target to manipulate.”

Baekhyun shakes his head. His tongue swipes along the healing skin of his bottom lip in a quick flash of pink. Kyungsoo can hear the gears turning in his head from across the room, the soft hums as he narrows his eyes to take in every last detail of the binders on the bottom shelves of each bookcase. 

The desk is strangely bare. It has two computer monitors and a pencil holder full of black and red ballpoint pens, a small container of paper clips and binder clips off to the side with a stack of post-it notes, but nothing with any sort of personality. No notes to remind the client of this or that, no pictures of loved ones or fond memories, not a single sheet of paper to read or form to sign. Kyungsoo, while not intimately familiar with the lives of high-powered executives the way Baekhyun is, has spent many hours staring through office windows from rooftops across the street and knows that it isn’t normal for a CEO’s desk to look like this.

“No, no, there haven’t been any new CEOs for companies worth knowing in the past two years except for—oh fuck. Oh, oh no,  _ Kyungsoo,  _ tell me you didn’t,” Baekhyun turns away from the file cabinets tucked in the far corner of the room with wide eyes lit by a sudden realization. 

“What?” Kyungsoo can practically  _ see  _ the lightbulb going off above his head and finds that he’s more than a little unnerved to be the one in the dark for once. 

“Turn on the computer! Turn on the computer! Do it, do it right now! If I’m right, it explains a whole lot about the hit on you.” Baekhyun rounds the desk and stops roughly a step away from Kyungsoo’s back. Kyungsoo can feel his breath on the side of his neck as he turns on the monitor and wakes the computer up with a shake of the mouse. As the desktop takes its sweet fucking time whirring back to life, Kyungsoo cranes his head around and demands Baekhyun be a little more forthcoming about his apparent revelation.

“About a year and a half ago, on his eighteenth birthday, Kim Jongin was instated as the newest CEO of J Kim International, a pretty big name in the shipping industry that branched out into cafes just before Jongin’s father and the last CEO, Kim Jimin, was murdered in his home.” Baekhyun levels a  _ look  _ at Kyungsoo, “But I’m pretty sure you already knew about that last part.”

The monitor lights up with the sign-in screen for Kim Jongin, the user picture a photograph of a brown poodle. “That’s Jongin, alright. That’s his dog. I can tell by the collar.”

Kyungsoo can’t do much more than grimace. That does indeed explain nearly everything about this entire situation. 

It would take a lot of time and energy to track Kyungsoo’s real identity down, even more time, energy, money, and influence to put out a hit on him like the bounty currently hanging over his head. Only someone that truly  _ hated  _ him would waste that much of their life; only someone who had, for example, walked in and found their father dead in their home at the tumultuous age of fourteen would be capable of hating him that much.

Though it doesn’t explain why Baekhyun was dragged into the mess at hand. Kyungsoo plugs the USB full of hacking software into the computer tower and lets it run, hoping to find something that might tell them who the other people masquerading as the client are and where they might find them. 

Then, he turns back to Baekhyun, hoping to circumvent any sort of conversation about how the situation they’re in is very much the consequences of his own actions. “I think it goes without saying why Jongin would pay ridiculous amounts of money to see my brains splattered on the wall, but why you? Do you two have any sort of bad blood?”

“Actually, we’re pretty decent friends,” Baekhyun says with a shrug. “My parents wanted us to be more because they thought he would turn me into a dutiful son, but we just never felt that way about each other. Do you think I was just bait? Maybe he thought he could have you killed in time that I would never be in any actual danger?”

In a knee-jerk reaction, Baekhyun’s theory makes perfect sense. If Jongin was the client, that would be just the sort of self-assured plan a nineteen-year-old would come up with. Kyungsoo would be the main target, with Baekhyun serving in a dual role as bait and unfortunate collateral damage. But Jongin is undeniably not the true client, just the one Kyungsoo has been communicating with, the one held up as the true client’s own collateral. 

The more Kyungsoo thinks about it, the more he realizes that his own death is a secondary goal. Jongin might believe that Kyungsoo is the main target, but whoever the other, more important, more powerful, more  _ dangerous  _ of Jongin’s co-conspirators are, they’re after Baekhyun.

“You’re the target. It’s always been you.”

Baekhyun blinks. “Huh?”

Kyungsoo can’t stop himself from grabbing Baekhyun by the shoulders and holding him still to look him in the eyes. “Think about it, Baekhyun! You and I both know that there’s no way Jongin could come up with the sort of money my contract is promising on his own, nor could he influence the search results like that. He would need help from people with much more wealth and power than he has. And if they just wanted me dead, why the charade with you, with Jongin? Why would those sort of people even bother to include him unless they were certain that it would fulfill their own goals as well?  _ You  _ are their goal.  _ You  _ have been the real target all this time.”

He feels like he’s grasping at straws, making leaps of logic unfounded. He can feel it though, knows that Jongin is as much a pawn in this game as Kyungsoo was when he answered the private message for Baekhyun’s contract. It’s a bit convoluted; Baekhyun would be easy to manipulate, easy to get rid of without a hitman if someone really wanted him dead.

Then again, most of the jobs Kyungsoo takes are to kill people that would be easily taken care of by a simple trip down a staircase. The people who order hits don’t want to get their hands dirty, don’t want a shred of evidence available that could point to them. Hitmen are used to take the blame, to point the police so far from the true culprit that those who order the hits never face any repercussions. The client likely involved Jongin and his grudge towards Kyungsoo to further muddy the waters, make it seem like Baekhyun wasn’t the true target but a poor soul caught in the middle of a fight between the worst of Seoul’s underground. And if the police did happen to find out about the hit on Baekhyun, everything was set up to lead them to Jongin. 

It’s all been set up to keep the client as far removed from the situation as possible. They get to reap whatever it is they stand to gain from Baekhyun’s death without ever risking being tied to his murder. 

If only Kyungsoo could figure out why anyone would want Baekhyun dead in the first place, what anyone could gain from it.

“O-oh,” all the color drains from Baekhyun’s face. Kyungsoo grabs him around the middle before he can fall and sets him in the office chair nearby. “Oh, well, th-that’s not good, is it?”

Kyungsoo kneels before him, Baekhyun’s cold, clammy hands clasped in his own. “Listen,” he whispers, “we’re a team. It doesn’t matter which one of us is the real target, we’re still a team. I’m on your side, Baek.”

Tears well up in Baekhyun’s eyes as peals of hysterical laughter bubble out of him. Kyungsoo tries to comfort him, but there isn’t much that he can do but let Baekhyun process it all. They had both been under the assumption that Baekhyun had just been dragged into Kyungsoo’s mess, not the other way around. He supposes that shows just how well the client had thought all of this out, or how hard it is to think critically under so much stress.

“Kyungsoo, Kyungsoo,” Baekhyun wipes his face on the sleeves of his borrowed hoodie, trying so hard to keep himself together, “if you’d left me b-back in Seoul, I would’ve been dead by morning, wouldn’t I? Wh-whoever the people Jongin is working with would have had me killed before you even made it to Daegu. You know, if you killed me right now you could probably get the other people to call off your contract and get all that money.”

“Shut your fucking mouth.” Kyungsoo lunges up and holds Baekhyun by the jaw. He bites his tongue against the wave of rage that washes over him, reminding himself that Baekhyun is twenty and torn apart by the knowledge that someone with a lot of money and power is willing to go to extraordinary measures if it means seeing him dead. “Don’t you ever say anything like that again. Long-fucking-haul, Byun Baekhyun. I don’t give a shit who wants you dead, you’re a royal pain in my ass and I want to keep it that way, you hear me? We are not going to be a two-for-one deal.”

Baekhyun lets out a watery laugh and sags forward into Kyungsoo’s arms, leaving him scrambling to try and remember how to hug someone without trying to squeeze the life out of them. “That’s so morbid,” Baekhyun giggles.

Kyungsoo holds Baekhyun close and feels his heartbeat, reminding himself that they’re both still alive and mostly well.

The computer dings behind them, signaling that the USB has run through all its software. While Baekhyun collects himself in the office chair, Kyungsoo begins searching through the files for something useful. He looks for any strangely named folders or files, anything password-protected that had to be unlocked. He checks Jongin’s internet history on every browser on the computer just in case he was stupid enough to not clear his history or use some sort of private browser. 

The computer is completely devoid of any illicit information. Jongin likely used his personal laptop for anything and everything relating to the dark web and hitmen or kept everything on a flash drive that he could have on him at all times to minimize the risk of someone discovering his dirty secrets. 

Kyungsoo doesn’t blame him. That’s what he would do, if he were in Jongin’s position. Though if he were in Jongin’s position, he wouldn’t have bothered with the entire scheme involving Baekhyun and just used his own funds to put up a contract for his enemy’s life. 

Jongin has more than enough money to tempt at least a few of Kyungsoo’s colleagues into trying their hand at taking down one of the deadliest hitmen in Seoul. But grief makes people irrational, angry. Jongin wants Kyungsoo dead very badly, and that means he wants the best hitmen in Seoul hunting him down. Suho, Xiumin, Chen, those hitmen cost a pretty fucking penny to take a job as dangerous as hunting down one of their own. Jongin might not have the money for that all by himself.

After the search for any information about the contracts comes up empty, Kyungsoo growls to himself, nose crinkling in irritation, and moves on to checking the calendars for any hint as to where Jongin is and where he may be going next. The computer’s calendar has nothing but standard, bland labels, nothing personal. Next is the Google calendar where all of Jongin’s business and personal events are said to be compiled. He scours the built-in holidays and the odd company-wide event looking for something that stands out.

“There.” Kyungsoo startles as a finger comes down to touch the calendar box for two Fridays from now. He looks up to see Baekhyun’s red, tear-streaked face leaning in over his shoulder. He looks like hell, but there’s determination in his eyes. “Right there. ‘Byun Memorial Charity Fundraiser.’ Memorial? Do they think I’m dead?”

Kyungsoo shrugs with a grimace, turning his gaze back to the computer screen. “Seems like it. You’ve disappeared without a trace as a hostage. Though I thought it took at least a year for someone to be declared dead without a body. Or perhaps my former colleagues took out someone at the other fundraiser. That address, do you recognize it?”

“Uh-huh,” Baekhyun nods. “It’s a theater my parents own. They bought it when they were thinking about branching out into entertainment. It’s in Seoul, not far from the Byun tower, actually.”

They don’t need words, simply sharing a look and nodding in agreement. They’re going back to Seoul. No matter how badly neither of them want to. 

Baekhyun is very obviously reluctant, going to chew on his bottom lip again. Kyungsoo just hopes that they’ve managed to draw the most dangerous of his former colleagues away from the capital.

“We’ll need to stop in Goyang first. I need to pick up a few things and it’ll be a good place to hide out until we need to be in Seoul.” Kyungsoo stands and shuts the computer off again, pushing the chair back towards the desk. He draws a rag out from the bag they’d brought with them and proceeds to wipe down the monitor, keyboard and anything else either of them might have touched.

“Alright,” Baekhyun replies. He wipes at his eyes one last time and then takes a deep breath, steadying his nerves and doing his absolute best to appear tough. “Can we go, then? I feel like we’ve been on borrowed time since we stepped out of the stairway.”

They’ve gotten damn lucky to have only run into the one security guard. A building like this should have been crawling with workers staying late, if not more security guards, and Kyungsoo can’t help but wonder how their luck has managed to hold up for so long. It makes him tense, terrified that it’s all going to come crashing down at any second. 

He waves Baekhyun towards the door.

The handle immediately begins to jostle. 

Kyungsoo manages to get to Baekhyun and slap a hand over his mouth before he screams. “Don’t make a sound,” he hisses into the other man’s ear. Baekhyun nods, breathing shaky and uneven. The door handle continues to jiggle, the door itself rattling in its frame. “I locked the door, remember? We’re fine.”

“Janitor. It could just be a j-janitor.” 

It could be, but a janitor would have announced themselves or walked away by now, not continue to fuck with the door like it will magically open. Whoever is on the other side of the door  _ wants  _ inside. Kyungsoo doesn’t tell Baekhyun though. He doesn’t particularly think he needs to. They’re pressed so closely together that Kyungsoo can feel his heart racing. He knows the sort of danger they’re in, has known since Kyungsoo pulled a gun on him in that bathroom only a few days ago—and just the idea that they’ve only been together for a few days is almost as disorienting as the sudden rush of terror that comes when something slams against the door.

“This is what we’re going to do,” Kyungsoo gentle nudges Baekhyun closer to the door as it shakes again. He reaches for his gun and levels it at where he assumes the person on the other side of the door’s head will be. “Open the door and trust me.” 

It’s quick. Baekhyun flips the lock and yanks the door open, ducking behind it. Kyungsoo shoots the hitman on the other side once, twice, before he drops into a pool of his own blood. 

Kyungsoo is grabbing Baekhyun by the wrist and yanking him back down the hallway before the other hitman has even finished gurgling. “Remember what I told you. Safety off, point, and shoot. Don’t hesitate to kill them, because they won’t hesitate to kill you. Duck!”

Suho appears from one of the lower level executives’ offices and fires a hail of bullets at them. Kyungsoo manages to force both himself and Baekhyun to the floor and fires off a few shots of his own. His aim is a bit shoddy, but it’s enough to make Suho curse and duck back into the office. Kyungsoo sprints to the office door and shoves a chair underneath the handle to try and slow Suho down. 

“Get to the stairs,” Kyungsoo shouts. Baekhyun looks at him like he’s lost his fucking mind, gesturing to the multiple offices and bullpens they’d have to pass by first. He’s right; they’d be stupid to try and run that way.

Bullets fly from all directions. The sound is deafening, like sitting in a warzone. Baekhyun is covering one ear with his free hand and squeezing the other against his shoulder, face white as a sheet. Kyungsoo scrambles to come up with another plan. This is why he always,  _ always  _ cases places before he breaks in. He likes to plan, not fly by the seat of his pants in the middle of a fucking ambush. Fuck, he doesn’t even know  _ how  _ they all tracked them here so fast. Busan as a whole would have been believable. But here? Now? 

It’s honestly still believable, especially considering the security guard downstairs and the dead hitman from Daegu’s phone in Kyungsoo’s back pocket. He should have ditched that at the beach that morning. He should have bound the security guard and barricaded the door to the broom closet.

Kyungsoo growls to himself. There’s at least ten, maybe twenty trained killers lurking around the floor. Some are just lying in wait in hopes that Kyungsoo stumbles across them and they get a lucky shot. The best, the ones Kyungsoo knows decently well, are aggressive, advancing office-by-office.

Kyungsoo gets a glimpse of Xiumin from around the corner, towards the staircase and the glass offices. A bullet is quick to ricochet off the wall near Xiumin’s face, sending him scrambling back with wide eyes. 

“The kid’s got a gun too!”

Kyungsoo turns around and barks out a laugh. The muzzle of Baekhyun’s gun is smoking and his eyes are even wider than Xiumin’s. Baekhyun’s a little shit, but fuck if he doesn’t know how to follow orders.

Once he’s done panicking over firing a gun for the first time in his life, he grabs Kyungsoo by the arm and hauls him back towards Jongin’s office. When Kyungsoo asks why, shouting about refusing to be a sitting duck, Baekhyun yanks him towards a narrow corridor just off to the side of Jongin’s office that Kyungsoo hadn’t noticed before, likely too preoccupied with finding the CEO’s office. “Private. Elevator. Now.”

And it’s impossible to argue with that sort of logic.

Kyungsoo runs after Baekhyun, holding tight to his arm and forcing them to run in a serpentine pattern to avoid the spray of bullets. They duck, weave, slam themselves into the walls. Kyungsoo shoots at the ceiling to take out the lights and plunge them all into darkness. There's swearing from all sides, thundering footsteps, but the sound of gunshots slow. 

Xiumin is likely still shooting, being a terrifyingly good shot, but the others will be too scared. No hitman wants to risk a wild shot hitting a fire extinguisher and causing an explosion.

It isn’t much, but it buys them a little more time, makes their run to the elevator a little less dangerous.

“Go,” Kyungsoo hisses when Baekhyun slows, startled by the dark. “Go, go, go! Keep running, just be care— Shit!”

Kyungsoo loses his footing in loose dirt and goes down hard, slamming his head into solid ceramic. The fucking ficus. Kyungsoo swallows down a wave of nausea as his head spins, throbbing with pain. His vision swims and struggles to get to his feet.

“Kyungsoo,” Baekhyun spins around at Kyungsoo’s cry. There’s a moment where Kyungsoo thinks he’s going to pass out from panic, face going deathly white. And then he’s darting forward to haul Kyungsoo up by the arm and support him in a clumsy run to the elevator. 

They manage to get inside the elevator before anyone catches up to them. Kyungsoo leans against one of the elevator walls for support as Baekhyun jabs at the button for the ground floor. 

The numbers at the top of the elevator light up in sequence as the floors pass them by. Kyungsoo watches them. Baekhyun watches Kyungsoo.

“How bad,” he asks.

Kyungsoo gingerly presses his fingertips to his forehead and hisses at the pain. There’s a cut where his head hit the ceramic, not too deep but enough to have blood trickling down his face. He’s not all that worried about it. He’s got a concussion though. He’s nauseous, dizzy, light-headed. Exhaustion eats at him as he struggles to get his limbs under control. He tries to take a step across the elevator and nearly topples over, balance completely fucked. “Not good.”

Baekhyun whimpers and Kyungsoo attempts to reassure him with a smile.

“Remember what you promised me, Baekhyun. I’m going to run like hell, but I can barely stand and you can’t carry me. If I go down…” Kyungsoo trails off, throat constricting at the agony on Baekhyun’s face. “You get in that car and  _ go.  _ Go to Goyang, you’ll know where to go if you look up Do’s Family Food Stand. There’s a list of addresses and names in the duffle bags. Call them, tell them you’re cashing in D.O.’s final favor and you need a fresh start.”

“Kyungsoo,” Baekhyun’s voice breaks and he doesn’t say anything else. He tries, mouth opening and closing, but all he does is reclaim his spot under Kyungsoo’s arm.

Kyungsoo focuses on his breathing and watches the numbers tick down. He tenses his body and gets ready to run as they approach one. Baekhyun does as well. The private elevator shouldn’t be too far from the front doors. He just has to make it to the car, just that short distance to the car.

The elevator dings as it reaches the ground floor. “On three. We have to be fast. There’s no telling how many hitmen are waiting out there. You better be ready to shoot.” 

They take off at a dead sprint. There are very, very few hitmen waiting for them—only one, in fact, a rat that Baekhyun knocks unconscious by throwing his gun at their head out of reflex. If it had happened in any other situation, Kyungsoo would have doubled over in laughter at the sight of Baekhyun, scared out of his mind, using his fully-loaded handgun like a boomerang at a trained hitman and knocking him out.

As it is, Kyungsoo is stuck just trying to keep his balance as he runs, one hand on the wall as his vision goes out of focus.

He runs as hard as he can, putting more and more weight onto Baekhyun. He knows some of the other hitmen have to be coming down the stairs or the public elevator. They don’t have much time. They have to run  _ faster.  _

Kyungsoo knows he’s not going to make it. He’s concussed and he’s running too slow. Baekhyun is doing the brunt of the work for the both of them and it's not enough. Kyungsoo knows he’ll get them both killed this way, too dizzy to stand, halfway to unconsciousness.

And so, he collapses. He throws himself at the nearest open door and lets himself drop to the floor just inside the empty meeting room and doesn’t get back up, lying flat on his back as the world spins around him. He rolls to the side and retches, dry-heaving. “Go,” he wheezes. “Go. Take the keys and run your annoying ass off.”

Baekhyun stumbles to a stop. Kyungsoo’s heart aches at the absolute devastation on his face. He’s got such a good heart; Kyungsoo hates whoever Jongin is working with so, so much for targeting a real, actual good person. He hates Jongin too, for putting Baekhyun in the middle of this mess when it should’ve just been Kyungsoo in danger. “No. No, no, no! Get up! Get! Up! We were doing fine, come on! I can support you the whole way, please! We’re so close. Please, let’s just get to the car. Please, please don’t leave me. I-I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to leave you.”

Kyungsoo smiles. “Go. I’m three seconds away from passing out. There’s no way of knowing how bad this concussion is. I could start seizing or just fucking die any second now.” He finally manages to vomit, but it does nothing for his nausea. “I’ll hold them off as long as possible. If I’m going to die, at least let me make it worth something. Let me make sure you live. You promised me that, you little shit.”

Baekhyun still doesn’t move, staring at Kyungsoo with his hands clutched tight to his chest. Spots appear in Kyungsoo’s vision. That ceramic pot must have been reinforced with fucking concrete. Or maybe Kyungsoo just fell that hard.

_ “Go,  _ Baekhyun!”

Kyungsoo watches Baekhyun take the bag holding the keys and the flash drives and the guns. Fatigue weighs on him, pushing him farther and farther from consciousness. But he forces his eyes to stay open until he’s sure Baekhyun has left. 

Baekhyun stops at the door to the meeting room. He gives Kyungsoo one last, lingering look before he shuts the door behind him and disappears from view, pretty brown eyes red from crying. Kyungsoo tries to protest that he won’t be able to cover him with the door closed, but his words are slurred. He vomits again. 

The world begins to go dark. Kyungsoo can’t keep his eyes open anymore, no matter how hard he tries. He lets go.

* * *

Kyungsoo feels like  _ shit.  _ He wakes up groggy, disoriented, in pain, and he wants nothing more than to fall back asleep. He tries for a little bit, but gives up with a groan once he realizes he’s not going to be able to fall back asleep until his blinding headache abates. And so, he opens his eyes, staring out into a dimly lit room. 

It’s a room he recognizes, albeit faintly. The framed photos on the far wall, the soft yellow paint on the ceiling, the cream of the bed sheets, he knows it from the few times he’s gotten injured on the job so badly that he couldn’t take care of it on his own. 

Zhang Yixing is a damn good surgeon, and one of the few people he truly trusts in this world. That’s only because Kyungsoo earned his loyalty by helping him cut ties with the Seoul underground and reconnect with the Chinese mafia. Why he’s still in Korea is something Kyungsoo has never cared to ask, just happy to have a trained physician to run to in case he catches a stray bullet or falls while escaping from a rooftop. 

Yixing, being a very important member of the Chinese mafia, also serves as a safe-haven, a sanctuary no hitman would dare to enter uninvited out of fear of bringing down the Dragon’s wrath upon themselves. Back in Seoul, Kyungsoo had actually thought about begging Yixing to hide him while he came up with a plan to leave the country. He was just too busy seeking revenging and finding answers to think clearly.

He’s here now though, safe and alive in Yixing’s house in Cheongju.

And that’s a bit funny, as Kyungsoo’s last memory is of passing out from a concussion in Jongin’s office building in Busan. He had slammed his head into a fucking ceramic planter for a ficus and given himself the worst concussion of his life. He had thought for sure that he was going to die there. He had made peace with it, happy in the knowledge that Baekhyun was going to get out even if he couldn’t.

He remembers how he made Baekhyun promise to leave him behind; he laughs softly when he realizes that Baekhyun never promised him shit, just said that he understood what Kyungsoo wanted.

A soft snore floats through the air as Kyungsoo finally registers a warm weight resting on his left ankle. Kyungsoo smiles to himself, shaking his head in exasperation. He has one guess as to how he got here. 

It takes a bit of effort for Kyungsoo to sit up enough to get a good look at the foot of the bed, forced to prop himself up on his elbows to steady himself through a sudden wave of nausea. Baekhyun is sleeping in a chair at Kyungsoo’s bedside. He is slumped over the side of the bed with his head resting on top of the blankets over Kyungsoo’s ankle, eyes ringed in dark bruises.

The light shining through the window tells Kyungsoo it’s nearly noon, but Kyungsoo wouldn’t be surprised if Baekhyun only fell asleep an hour or two ago. Not wanting to wake him, Kyungsoo lowers himself back down onto the mattress and contents himself with staring at the ceiling and deciding where they’re going to go from here.

Everyone knows he and Baekhyun are a team by now. Suho and Xiumin are likely scouring Busan for him, checking every last inch of the city so they can finish the job. 

If he was alone, they would’ve caught him, found his unconscious body in that meeting room and taken him out with a bullet to the head. But he has Baekhyun now, who refuses to listen to reason or obey a single order and dragged him all the way to Cheongju even though it meant risking his own life.

Kyungsoo owes him more than either of them will ever truly comprehend.

The door to the room opens slowly, silently. “Kyungsoo?” Kyungsoo bites his tongue to fight back a flinch. Yixing has always been so fucking light on his feet; it’s the one thing Kyungsoo has never liked about him. Yixing said once that he keeps the hinges on all his doors well-oiled to avoid disturbing any surprise guests and avoid alerting any who are uninvited.

Kyungsoo strains his neck up and offers Yixing a weak wave. “Yixing. Good to see you.”

Yixing nods once in greeting as he shuts the door behind him. The latch clicks shut and Yixing comes to Kyungsoo’s bedside with a penlight, stethoscope, and a bottle of painkillers. Baekhyun doesn’t stir at the noise, nor at the movement. Instead he starts drooling on Kyungsoo’s ankle as his eyes dart around behind his eyelids. 

“Likewise, though I wish it were under better circumstances, obviously,” Yixing’s mouth twitches up into a wry smile—Kyungsoo cannot remember ever seeing Yixing under circumstances that weren’t soaked in blood and pain and they both know it. “You’re conscious. That’s good. This was a bad concussion, nearly a traumatic brain injury. You threw up. A lot. Your boy here did a good job making sure you never aspirated on your own vomit. Probably saved your life. But I had no way of knowing how badly your brain had swelled or if you would ever wake up. I was pretty sure you had a brain bleed for a little while. It looks as though I was wrong, thankfully.”

Kyungsoo smiles for a moment, wishing he could reach down and gently tug at Baekhyun’s earlobe in a silent show of gratitude. And then, “Don’t tell me you told him that.”

“He asked if you would be okay. I answered. I don’t sugarcoat shit, Kyungsoo, you know that. You can go ahead and baby him all you want when he wakes up, but he’s a grown man to me and that means he needs to handle reality. Reality is that you nearly cracked your own fucking skull open. I’m surprised you didn’t start seizing.” Yixing checks Kyungsoo’s pupils with the penlight and then asks him to follow Yixing’s fingers as it moves in front of his face.

Kyungsoo frowns. “I’m not—I’m not sugarcoating anything. You just didn’t have to give him all the details. These past few days have been hell. For both of us.”

“Baekhyun told me as much when he arrived,” Yixing says. “Once he finally stopped crying and let me work, he managed to tell me a bit about Kim Jongin and the contracts on your lives. Not much, but enough for me to know that you’re likely going to need me to get in contact with Yifan and Luhan.”

“That...would be helpful. Very helpful.” Kyungsoo closes his eyes and leans his head back. He counts back through all the favors he’s traded with the leaders of Yixing’s particular sect of Chinese mafia over the years and tries to remember if they’re in his debt or if he’s in theirs. 

They’ll help him either way. Yifan, Luhan, and Zitao good people, as good as those who make a living in murder and trafficking can be, but he’d prefer to not have that hanging over his head. They are not the sort to let something like that go without wanting something in return, be it the absolvement of a debt of their own or an extra-large favor.

“Did Baekhyun happen to tell you how he managed to get us both to Cheongju?” 

Yixing hums, “Ask him yourself. He’s waking up. I’ll be back later to check your pupils and cognitive abilities and discuss recovery, but you look fine so far. No artificial lights and don’t watch more than fifteen minutes of TV at a time at the very most.” Then, he takes his leave.

Kyungsoo blinks at that, lifting his head up to see Baekhyun slowly blinking himself awake. He can’t help the small smile that spreads across his lips. It’s nothing compared to the dazzling smile that breaks out across Baekhyun’s face once he wakes up enough to realize that Kyungsoo is awake and staring back at him.

“You’re awake,” he props his head up on his fist, relief shining in his eyes. It shines through the exhaustion and residual fear on his face. “You’re okay.”

Kyungsoo nods. “And you’re a little shit. I  _ told  _ you to go. You promised you would leave me behind if it came to it.”

And then Baekhyun, the monster, just scoots up closer to the head of the bed and smiles, “No, no I did not. I said I  _ understood  _ what you wanted me to do, not that I would actually do it.” He rests his head down on the mattress, staring up with those big brown eyes. They sparkle, so unbelievably happy. Kyungsoo takes the closeness as an opportunity to flick him in the nose. Baekhyun isn’t phased in the slightest, instead smiling wider. 

Kyungsoo rolls his eyes but fights the urge to make some snarky comment. Instead, he props himself up on the pillows. “How did you do it?  _ Why  _ did you do it?”

Baekhyun shrugs. “I told you then, I didn’t want to leave you behind. I didn’t want to be alone and I didn’t think I could live with myself if I let you die. So, I locked us in the meeting room and barricaded the door with some chairs to buy myself a little time to think. We had the security guard’s car keys, remember? I set off the alarm on that car so it looked like we were trying to use it to escape. I was able to sort of watch most of the hitmen run to the car where it was parked around back and when I felt like it was safe, I shook you until you woke up enough to support some of your own weight and hauled us both out of the window. You were unconscious again after that, but I was able to half-drag half-carry you to the parking garage.”

“You found my list of allies then, I take it?” Baekhyun nods. “Did you call anyone other than Yixing?” 

Baekhyun shakes his head, “His file was the first one I opened and it had a note about being a physician and it seemed like you two knew each other pretty well. Figured he was the best choice.”

Kyungsoo hums, “He probably interrogated the shit out of you when you called. Did he even let you in the door?”

“After he pinned me to the wall by my throat and threatened to gut me if I made one wrong move, yeah. I think he felt pretty confident that I wasn’t a threat when I burst into tears. You know that I never cried before all this shit started happening? I was never a crier until you pulled that gun on me and now I can’t seem to  _ stop.”  _ Kyungsoo snorts to hide the anger that builds in his chest at the image of Baekhyun being pinned to the wall. Yixing had every reason to believe that Baekhyun was an enemy, and Kyungsoo knows that. But it still makes him so fucking angry. Baekhyun swats at him, batting weakly at his shoulder. 

The groan of pain that comes out from between Kyungsoo’s teeth is more from how the intense emotion makes his head throb than Baekhyun’s weak, ineffective fists. But Baekhyun’s eyes go wide, jaw dropping, apologies pouring out of him all the same.

“It wasn’t you, Baek. Calm down,” he scrubs a hand over his face. “I’ve got a horrible concussion, my head is going to hurt for a while no matter what. I’ll be alright, just need to be careful and well-stocked with pain meds until I’m better.”

The frown on Baekhyun’s face tells him all he needs to know. Baekhyun doesn’t like this. He isn’t used to blood, to injury, to the way a few seconds of blood loss can be the difference between life and death. Baekhyun doesn’t like seeing Kyungsoo lying pale and tired on a make-shift hospital bed. 

Kyungsoo can’t blame him. If their positions were reversed, even with all of Kyungsoo’s experience with blood and death, he thinks he’d feel just as upset as Baekhyun looks, maybe more.

“I am  _ fine.  _ I promise you that. Yixing is a good doctor and even better surgeon. If he says I’m okay, then I’m okay. You don’t have to worry, alright?” Kyungsoo holds his breath. He reaches out, palm up. He takes a chance. 

Baekhyun manages a little smile and grabs Kyungsoo’s hand tight in his own. “Alright.”

For all the talk of how connections with others are the most important parts of life, actually caring about someone can be an absolute rollercoaster of an experience.

A yawn stretches Baekhyun’s mouth, eyes scrunched up. The bruises underneath his eyes are much more pronounced afterwards. He looks so tired. The drive from Busan to Cheongju should have only taken him three hours, four at the absolute most. He should have arrived a little after midnight and been free to fall asleep by two.

When Kyungsoo asks just how late he stayed awake, Baekhyun turns his gaze to the blankets and mumbles, “I tried to wait for you to wake up. Yixing said you would be fine and told me to take the non-medical guest room, but I just wanted to make sure.”

“How long did you manage to stay awake?” A wave of fondness rolls through Kyungsoo and he squeezes Baekhyun’s hand.

“Seven? Six? I’m not really sure. I turned off the TV around four because I was sick of infomercials. Ended up pacing for a while, then I decided to sit next to you instead. I think I wanted to keep you company. I’m not sure though, I was really tired.” He straightens up then, hand pulling out of Kyungsoo’s. His entire spine cracks in a series of rolling pops from top to bottom. His eyes are wide as rubs at his shoulders. 

“Sore,” Kyungsoo asks. Baekhyun nods, taking in deep breaths. 

“Shouldn’t have slept like that. Wow, that really hurts. From my shoulders down it’s just—really, really sore.” Baekhyun gently, gingerly leans back in his chair, blinking at the ceiling. He yawns again, exhaustion biting through the pain. That’s the worst sort of exhaustion, the one that drags one down into unconsciousness without a care for anything else in the world.

There are things Kyungsoo would still like to discuss, like who could want Baekhyun dead so badly and if he thinks the other hitmen could have followed them. But he decides that they can wait.

Baekhyun needs to rest, they both do. 

Kyungsoo thinks for a moment, weighing his own pride and dignity and love of solitude, before lifting up the covers on his left side, shifting his body over. “Come on,” he says, voice leaving no room for argument, “Get in. You need to sleep and I’d like to keep you in my sight until we have this situation with Jongin under control. Yixing’s home is essentially a sanctuary, but you’re the main target, Baek.”

It’s a nice, professional way of saying that the idea of not having Baekhyun near makes his skin crawl without sounding too attached.

He expects some sort of argument. Instead, Baekhyun clambers up into bed without a moment’s hesitation, making himself perfectly comfortable at Kyungsoo’s side. 

“I was hoping you’d let me stay. I’m so happy you’re okay.” The words are muffled by Kyungsoo’s arm, where Baekhyun has pressed his face against as he settles down to sleep. “I know I probably made you mad by not listening when you told me to leave, but I don’t care. I’d do it all over again without a second thought. Because you’re still alive. You’re here.”

A swell of emotion chokes Kyungsoo, making him grit his teeth and focus on his breathing to keep the feelings at bay. “I’m not mad at you. I only ever told you to leave me because I didn’t want my last moments to be filled with the sight of you dying as well. Knowing that you got yourself killed trying to save me.”

“I really care about you, Kyungsoo.” 

Kyungsoo doesn’t respond to that, not with words. He just wraps an arm around Baekhyun’s shoulders and squeezes him tight, hoping he can feel what he’s trying to say. Not that he’s even sure what he’s trying to say, just knows he wants Baekhyun close.

“I’m...I’m going to turn on the news, see what’s going on in the world. You go to sleep and I’ll wake you up if Yixing comes back or if anything important happens,” Kyungsoo says as he grabs the remote from the bedside table and turns on the TV mounted to the far wall.

Baekhyun nods, yawning once more. “I’ll watch with you for a little bit. Maybe we’ll see something about Jongin’s office building. Might tell us if the hitmen know we’re here.”

Kyungsoo hums in agreement. He pretends not to notice Baekhyun slowly, sneakily shift his head up onto his shoulder. The warmth is impossible to ignore, pleasant and comforting even though he knows Baekhyun is the one seeking comfort. Kyungsoo’s heartbeat is steady in his chest. He wonders if Baekhyun is trying to listen to it.

The news is full of soft, inconsequential stories. Entertainment, business, some petty crime in the local area, it all flashes by in well-put-together newscasters and short, succinct stories.

Baekhyun is slowly falling asleep on his shoulder. Kyungsoo can feel himself slipping as well. His eyes are fluttering shut, lured to sleep by Baekhyun’s warmth at his side and the soft hum of the TV. The pain in his head is negligible, little more than a blip on the radar. It’s a beautiful feeling, not jerking awake because he can’t truly relax, too worried about someone coming to kill them both. He just starts to fall asleep, and keeps falling. 

“Byun Baekhyun’s body was found in Daegu this morning.”

“Huh?” Baekhyun startles awake, eyes flying open. Kyungsoo is right behind him. “I-I’m dead? I’m dead?

The newscaster talks about how the body they identified as the heir to the Byun empire was likely killed three or four days earlier, a knife to the throat. They say the body was too mutilated to be identified visually, instead relying on DNA. The story is short; apparently, Baekhyun’s parents will be holding a press conference before their memorial event next week.

It doesn’t take a genius to know who the body in Daegu actually belongs to. But Baekhyun is very tired and doesn’t seem to be capable of processing much beyond the most basic of facts.

“But I’m not dead,” Baekhyun says.

“I know. I can tell.” Kyungsoo frowns, eyes narrowed at the TV screen. Kyungsoo swallows. He turns the TV off and gently scrubs his hands through his hair. “Baekhyun, they passed off the hitman as you. They lied about the DNA and said they found your dead body. Why would they do that? Why would they say that you, the target, are dead now when they  _ know  _ you’re not? The clients know you’re still alive, still with me. Why would they tell everyone you’re already dead?”

He bites down on his lower lip, that nervous habit Kyungsoo has to stop himself from correcting. His voice shakes as he speaks, soft, quiet, “I don’t know. God, I don’t know.”

Baekhyun’s mouth opens as he chokes on his words for a moment. His body shudders as he tries to breathe through the misery written across his face. He closes his mouth, open it again. Kyungsoo waits, but Baekhyun never finishes his sentence. The hope in his eyes slowly starts to die, wilting like a flower in the desert.

Kyungsoo is hit with a wave of nausea so strong he nearly gags because of it. Baekhyun is clever, resilient, strong; he isn’t meant to look like that. “I don’t know either,” he whispers. “But I know that it doesn’t matter what they’re planning with this, why they chose to declare you as dead. Whatever they’re planning, if they want to get you, they’ve got to get me first. And I don’t plan on letting anyone kill me anytime soon. It would be a waste of all the effort you spent saving my life.” Kyungsoo knocks his forehead against Baekhyun’s. 

The half-smile it earns him makes his heart throb in his chest, a deep-seeded ache.

“I had to haul your heavy ass up two flights of stairs,” Baekhyun says. He’s still scared, still tense like he’s been backed into a corner, but there’s a bit of laughter weaved into the unsteadiness of his voice. “For that, you’re not allowed to die until you’re in your nineties—at the very earliest.”

“Whatever you say, Baekhyun. Whatever you say. Go to sleep and quit bothering me, you’re annoying when you’re tired.” Baekhyun doesn’t even do him the courtesy of pretending to be intimidated, giggling against Kyungsoo’s shoulder and shifting to get comfortable again. He’s a hot line pressed against Kyungsoo’s side. It’s comfortable, almost familiar now after having spent the day before stuck together in the backseat of Baekhyun’s car.

He can feel when Baekhyun starts to relax, blinking slowly into the distance. Kyungsoo lays his head back and rests as well. 

He thinks. There has to be a reason for Baekhyun being declared dead. He knows that whoever wants Baekhyun dead has something to gain from it—he just doesn’t know what. In all actuality, Baekhyun being declared dead should be a blessing, it means the client doesn’t  _ need  _ Baekhyun dead to get whatever it is they want. He wonders if the client had a bout of guilt and decided to give Baekhyun an easy out, a way to leave the country with his life. 

It’s a possibility, but it seems too easy. After all this, he can’t see why they would be free to go after a simple stand-off in an office building. Kyungsoo wonders if the client has decided that the other hitmen aren’t going to get the job done when it comes to killing Kyungsoo and Baekhyun and is preparing to take care of Baekhyun themselves.

Kyungsoo blinks. There’s something to that, something dark and cruel and truthful. If it wasn’t for the concussion and exhaustion filling his brain with fog, he thinks he could figure out what it is. Instead, he just chases his thoughts around and around his skull.

Sleep comes eventually. One moment, he’s trying to remember the other executives of the Byun group. The next, he’s opening his eyes to Yixing tapping his foot through the blankets. It’s a common way to wake someone in their line of work up without risking a knife to the throat or a gun to the face. Hitmen are too jumpy for a shake of the shoulder.

“I’m just coming to check your concussion again,” Yixing murmurs. “What’s the date? Where are you?” Kyungsoo grumbles out his answers.

Yixing hums. “Good, good. I’d like for you to stay here a week though. Longer would be better, actually, because then I could make sure you don’t develop any complications. But I’d like a week.”

Kyungsoo frowns at that, thinking. They have less than two weeks until they need to be in Seoul. He wants to be there a day or two early to plan, though, and he wants at least five or six days in Goyang before that. They could stay a week, but it would be cutting things very close. 

“Today is Tuesday, right? We can stay until Friday, but then we need to go. Will five days be enough?” 

The look on Yixing’s face tells him that it is most certainly not enough, but Yixing cannot force him to stay and they both know it. Physically, he could, but he won’t. It’s not his way. “See if you can stretch that to Saturday, please. And once Baekhyun is awake, tell him I want to examine him. He was favoring his left leg when he carried you in this morning, likely just a twisted ankle but I’d like to make sure.”

“That’s strange. He said he was pacing earlier,” Kyungsoo turns to where the other man is still completely unconscious, mouth hanging open as he sleeps.

“Limping. He was limping. It must have hurt, but he was so worried he didn’t seem to care.” Yixing shakes his head at Baekhyun’s stupidity. Kyungsoo can’t help but agree. Baekhyun’s stress responses leave something to be desired. His lower lip is all but shredded and Kyungsoo knows Yixing has to have noticed as well.

“Rest more,” Yixing packs up his supplies. “I’ll bring you two something to eat next time I come in. I want you to rest as much as humanly possible, in the dark and quiet to let your brain rest. We’ll talk more about your plan to deal with Kim Jongin and his associates tomorrow. Yifan wants to make sure you don’t bring any trouble to China with you.”

Kyungsoo nods. That’s fair. If he were in Yifan’s position, he wouldn’t want anyone with that big of a target on them either. “Thank you, Yixing. And pass on my thanks to Yifan and the others as well.”

“I owe you,” Yixing replies simply. 

“Not anymore. After this, count us even.” That gets a smile out of Yixing. Kyungsoo nearly kicks himself for saying it, as having Yixing indebted to him has always been one of his biggest advantages, but if Yixing gets him safe passage to China, a new identity, a new life, one without murder as a living, then they’ll be well and truly even. The door shuts behind Yixing and leaves Kyungsoo alone with Baekhyun in the late afternoon light.

Baekhyun moves in his sleep, legs kicking out to rest on top of Kyungsoo’s. His eyes open for a moment. “Huh?”

“Go back to sleep,” Kyungsoo whispers. He does, drifting off once more with grumble.

* * *

As he stands in the doorway of his childhood home, Kyungsoo is hit by a wave of nostalgia. He glances around at the dusty furniture of the front hallway and sees ghosts, memories of his family getting ready to leave for school and work, coming back at the end of the day. He used to sit on the floor right beside the front door so that his parents could help him put his shoes on in the mornings. His mother always rotated the coats hanging from the hooks on the wall so that the coats and jackets meant for a particular season were closest to the door for easy grabbing. 

He can almost hear her shouting from the kitchen for him to come and sit at the table and tell her about his day. 

It’s like his family ingrained itself so deeply in the bones of the house that it can’t help but let out echoes of what it was like to have them all inside. It grieves. Kyungsoo stares down the dusty, dark, lonely hallway and feels grief too.

“Soo?” Kyungsoo blinks out of his thoughts at the sound of Baekhyun’s voice millimeters away from his ear. He looks over his shoulder to see the other man watching him with a concerned little frown on his lips, eyebrows pulling together. 

“Yes,” he steps to the side to let Baekhyun in, pointing him to where Kyungsoo’s old room is located at the end of the hallway. 

“I—uh—I’m not sure?” Baekhyun walks by him, stepping in close to brush their arms together. His duffle bag is hefted up higher on his shoulder as he turns to look at Kyungsoo with soft eyes. “Is it hard? Being here?”

Kyungsoo rolls his eyes fondly and points to the end of the hall where his childhood bedroom is located. “I spent the first eighteen years of my life in that room, in this house. My entire childhood is locked inside these walls and sometimes I can see it, like watching a movie. And sometimes, it hurts. But I’ll be okay. I’ll wander a little and let you settle in and then I’ll be fine.”

“You sure?”

“Of course,” Kyungsoo manages a smile. “Go, explore, be the nosy little shit you know you want to be. I should still have some non-perishables packed away in the kitchen, so maybe I’ll show you the good all those years working in a food stand did for me.”

Baekhyun’s gaze darts between the hallway and Kyungsoo, so openly torn between the want to make sure Kyungsoo is okay and the urge to go digging around through all of Kyungsoo’s shit. He chews on his bottom lip until Kyungsoo nudges him down the hallway with his shoulder. Baekhyun goes then, head swinging from side-to-side to take in all the dusty photographs hanging on the wall, peering into every open door. Kyungsoo sighs. Baekhyun will likely dig up all his most embarrassing secrets before they leave for Seoul in five days.

Kyungsoo leaves him to it, heading straight for the kitchen. There’s very little that Kyungsoo doesn’t want Baekhyun to see now, not after everything they’ve been through together.

Even if there is something Kyungsoo doesn’t want Baekhyun to see, it’s not as though he’s got much of a choice. Baekhyun is a persistent man; if he wants something badly enough, he’ll find a way to get it.

Kyungsoo’s mother’s kitchen is completely covered in a thick layer of dust, each and every crevice coated with cobwebs. He brushes his hand over the counter without thinking and kicks up clouds of dirt that make him cough and sneeze. It’s been much, much too long since he last came home, even longer since he set foot in the kitchen. It hurt too much, grief a sharp knife slice between his ribs, flaying him open and dousing him in boiling water

This was always  _ their _ space, where they spent time together huddled over recipes or eating at the little table tucked into the corner. Six years since she passed and he can still feel her here.

Six years since she passed and it still hurts to look around the kitchen and know that the echo of her is just that, an echo. 

Kyungsoo takes a moment to breathe, palms braced on the counter near the sink. He closes his eyes, head bowed, and lets himself hurt. There’s nothing else he can do but let himself miss her just as hard as he missed her the day she died. 

That’s something he noticed about grief, how it never fades in the sense that when it really hits, it hurts just as badly as it did when it was fresh. The only difference is that that pain comes less and less often, replaced by the soft mourning he does every single day, something he can live with, finding the silver lining in the way so many things remind him of her. He laughs. She would be so upset with him if she found out he let her kitchen fall into disrepair like this.

“Is this an Easy-Bake Oven?” Baekhyun’s voice comes from across the house, bubbling with mirth. It cuts through the darkness Kyungsoo hadn’t realized he’d allowed to surround him. Looking up from the sink, he feels a weight disappear off his shoulders, shaken off as Baekhyun giggles wildly over the toy he found in Kyungsoo’s room.

“I told you I liked to cook. Fuck off!”

Baekhyun only giggles louder, “Do you have any mixes left? Let’s make something later!”

Kyungsoo just shakes his head. Any mixes he has left are over ten years old, not that that will stop them from trying them later on just to have something fun to do. 

He opens a window, snatches a dishcloth out from the drawer next to the sink, and gets to work wiping away the long-settled dust. Even with the extra ventilation from the window, Kyungsoo still has to take a few breaks to keep himself from suffocating. He turns on the faucet and lets it run until the water turns clear, then grabs his favorite pots, pans, and plates out from the cupboards to soak in some hot, soapy water for when he cooks later.

The kitchen is nearly decent enough to use when Baekhyun stops by the entryway, hair mussed and face red from exertion. “I couldn’t find any cake mixes in your closet, but I did manage to get most of the stuff put away. I know it’s just for a few days, but I think I’d like to not live out of a duffle bag for those few days. If that’s okay with you?”

“That’s fine with me,” Kyungsoo pulls out a few packets of ramen from the pantry, humming as he looks between the different flavors and the various expiration dates. “Just make sure you remember where you put everything. Chicken or beef? Or jjajangmyeon?”

Baekhyun rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet, tongue sweeping across his bottom lip in a flash of pink as he thinks. “Jjajangmyeon maybe? Any is fine though. We’ll be able to try all of them before we have to leave, right? We’re surviving off the food in the house.” 

Kyungsoo nods. He had hoped to be able to stop by the store at least once to get something in the way of fresh produce and make some sort of meal, but he would also like to minimize the risk of being spotted and tracked back to the house. This house is his one true sanctuary, somewhere no one should be able to find without his permission. They’ve survived off of food substitutes for this long, another week won’t kill them.

He snorts at his own joke. Baekhyun looks at him like he’s insane until he relays his thoughts, and then Baekhyun lets out a laugh as well. 

“You’ve got a sick sense of humor,” Baekhyun grins.

“You laughed too, so what does that say about you?” Baekhyun’s nose crinkles up at that and Kyungsoo finds himself smiling. He’s too much fun to tease, too easy to be around. If he were in Kyungsoo’s line of work, that smile would be positively lethal. 

For a moment, Kyungsoo considers what it would be like to work as a team, the two of them against the world just as they are now. Kyungsoo would be just as he always has been, an excellent shot, a trained killer for hire, a predator. Baekhyun would handle all the undercover work, so charming and genuine and handsome that it would be nigh impossible  _ not  _ to go with him wherever he asks. 

But Kyungsoo would never ask that of Baekhyun. Kyungsoo refuses to ask that of himself, not anymore. 

After this mess is over, he’s leaving the business for good. He’s going to take all that blood money and use it to start over, live a life his mother would be happy with, a life  _ he  _ will be happy to live. He isn’t sure where he’ll be or what he’ll do, but he knows it’ll be a much better life than this.

“Do you need any help getting the rest of the bags,” Kyungsoo asks. “You look tired.” He can’t carry much thanks to his concussion, but he could take a few things to lighten the load.

Baekhyun shakes his head just as thunder claps overhead, a storm coming in out of nowhere, the sun that had been shining completely obscured by dark, heavy clouds. They both startle; Kyungsoo looks back to the open window to see rain pouring down just as Baekhyun’s eyes go wide and he grimaces, “I left the windows down! Shit!”

They do end up running out to the car together, biting back laughter as Kyungsoo runs to close the car windows and Baekhyun grabs the last few bags out of the trunk

It’s raining so heavily that they’re both soaked through by the time they get back inside. Water drips down their bodies and puddles onto the floor. Baekhyun’s hair is matted down to his forehead, so long that the very tips of his fringe reach the bridge of his nose. The rainwater and the cold that comes with it do nothing to stop his smile as he throws his head back and laughs. Kyungsoo sighs and starts to strip out of his wet clothing, letting out a laugh of his own when Baekhyun notices and turns red.

“I’m not going to stay in wet clothes. You should change as well unless you want to catch a cold.” Kyungsoo’s shirt is tossed to the side, then his pants are shoved down his legs to join the puddles of cold rainwater on the floor. He leaves his underwear on because he isn’t an exhibitionist, no matter how much enjoys the feel of Baekhyun’s stare on him, roaming over his bare skin. 

Baekhyun is still fully clothed. His cheeks are flushed, eyes wide as he stares at Kyungsoo. He licks at his bottom lip, swallows. “Yeah, but h-here?” 

“Where else?” 

“Your room, maybe? I’m, um, I’m going to go change there. I’ll get you something to wear?” Baekhyun finally seems to regain control of himself and starts scurrying back towards Kyungsoo’s old room, red all the way from the tip of his nose to the tips of his ears. “I can’t believe you’d just start stripping in front of me!”

Kyungsoo grins at his retreating back, “What? Am I that disgusting?”

That has Baekhyun stopping in his tracks. He turns on his heel, hands on his hips, to stare Kyungsoo down with a scowl. “You know very well that you’re hot and I find you very attractive. We met because you were seducing me so that you could get me alone and kill me, remember? And it worked very well, obviously.”

“But that was just based on how attractive you found my face. My body could be something very different. Though I guess it’s not, considering you still can’t stop staring.” Baekhyun huffs, but now he looks a little humiliated, discomfort written along the line of his frown. And that isn’t what Kyungsoo was going for at all. “Baek, I think you’re very attractive as well. Flirting with you was very, very easy.”

Baekhyun flushes again, but it seems a little more pleased, biting down on his lower lip to fight off a smile before he goes to change out of his wet clothing. A fresh shirt and pair of pants are thrown back down the hall to Kyungsoo a few seconds later. “Stop being naked!”

“I’m not naked,” Kyungsoo laughs even as he picks up the fresh clothing and redresses himself. “I have underwear on.”

“Then stop being mostly naked! And go make food like you promised!”

Later, after they’ve both changed into dry clothing and the sun has all but set, they end up eating jjajangmyeon together in the living room. It isn't the best, nothing like what Kyungsoo described making with his mother at their food stand, but together, but settled side-by-side with Baekhyun, Kyungsoo is more than satisfied.

It’s cold in the house, it always is when it rains and that cold is doubled by the fact that Kyungsoo is wary to turn on the space heater that hasn’t been used in five years. The last thing he needs is to blow himself up with some faulty wiring. The jjajangmyeon is spicy enough to warm him up, but eventually Kyungsoo can feel the chill settle in and notices Baekhyun has started to shiver beside him. 

“Come on, there are blankets in my mother’s room.” Kyungsoo gestures for Baekhyun to stand first. He takes the hand he is offered in return without complaint even though it eats at his pride to need the help. He’s in much better shape than he was when Baekhyun first hauled him to Yixing, but he was told to limit any strenuous activity.

Kyungsoo’s mother’s room is mostly as it was when she died. She had started packing up her things when she got really sick, not wanting Kyungsoo to have to do it. She hadn’t gotten very far, just two boxes of her least favorite pieces of clothing. After that, she had simply gotten too sick, hardly strong enough to get out of bed. Her bed is unmade, the only thing Kyungsoo had managed to make himself do when it came to packing up her room.

“Blankets should be in her closet,” Kyungsoo rounds the bed to get to the bookshelf next to the window, leaving Baekhyun to gather up enough blankets to keep them warm through the night. 

The top shelf of the bookshelf is full of photo albums. Kyungsoo took some of them with him to Seoul, the ones that he thought would mean the most. He grabs them all now, each and every single one. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get to come back for them after this. The albums are labeled with the years they contain, usually three or four years per album up until his birth, then his mother could only two years in an album if she was lucky. She always loved photos. 

“Want to make fun of my baby pictures?” Kyungsoo turns to see Baekhyun standing in front of his mother’s closet, staring with a soft expression at the yellow floral sundress hanging on the rack by itself, all the other items of clothing shoved to the side to give it space. “That was her favorite,” he goes to stand beside Baekhyun, “She demanded to be buried in her second favorite dress so that I could keep this one. She said that she wanted me to give it to my daughter, if I ever had one.”

Baekhyun swallows, his voice caught in his throat, “It’s beautiful.  _ She  _ was beautiful. She must have looked gorgeous in it.”

She did. Kyungsoo remembers her wearing that dress to his birthday parties growing up. His father would wear a matching tie and Kyungsoo would often ask for something yellow to wear as well. 

“We’ll take it with us when we leave.” 

“Just tell me if there’s anything else you want to bring, okay,” Baekhyun gently bumps their shoulders together. “I can rearrange the duffle bags so that there’s more space for her things.”

Kyungsoo nods. He tells Baekhyun to grab as many blankets as he can carry and then slowly walks back to the living room, cataloging each and every thing he wants to take with them as he goes. All the pictures hanging on the walls, the vase that’s been in his father’s family for generations, the stack of menus and flyers for the food stand he and his mother ran together. He knows that he likely won’t be able to take everything with him, but he won’t leave the important things behind again.

It hits him that this is the second home he’s leaving behind in as many weeks. He sighs and shakes his head at what his life has become.

It’s almost something his mother can be proud of, at least. He hated that part of being a hitman, that his mother would have been so disappointed in him. She would be proud of him for this, for not leaving Baekhyun behind to die, for letting someone in after so long. 

He smiles and looks out at the storm through the window by the front door. His head hurts, his heart aches from grief, but he knows his mother would be proud of him if she were alive. She would smile at him, berate him teasingly for not bringing a boy like Baekhyun home sooner, and then love Baekhyun enough to heal some of the gaping wounds his parents left behind his eyes.

He settles on the couch with his stack of photo albums, starting with the very first, the pictures of his parents together before they got engaged. He blows off the dust and runs his fingers over the slick plastic covering the photographs. His parents were so young when they fell in love, younger than he is now.

A weight dips the couch cushion beside him as Baekhyun sits down. He tucks the newly acquired blankets over both their laps. He scoots in just close enough for Kyungsoo to feel his warmth. He looks over Kyungsoo’s shoulder at the photographs, chewing on the inside of his cheek to give his lower lip a break. “Were you a fat baby,” he asks, eyes sparkling. “I bet you were. You look like you would have been a really cute baby.”

Kyungsoo sighs through his nose and rolls his neck to try and fight the bittersweet tears. His mother used to tease him by saying she was going to sit his future partner down and embarrass the hell out of him with these fucking photo albums. Everything is backwards, twisted, a mockery of what she had envisioned, but Kyungsoo supposes that this is better than nothing.

“And what did  _ you  _ look like as a baby,” Kyungsoo murmurs, “before you grew into your ears?” 

Baekhyun blushes a pretty pale rose before snatching up the album from the year Kyungsoo was born with a huff. He tucks a lock of hair behind his ear, self-conscious, and Kyungsoo smiles. A nudge of shoulders and Kyungsoo manages to coax another smile out Baekhyun as he struggles to hold onto his pout. 

He fails. Kyungsoo watches from the corner of his eye as his lips turn up at the corners. 

Kyungsoo shifts, pressing his weight onto the edge of Baekhyun’s couch cushion so that he tips in closer, leaning against him, head on his shoulder.

He jabs with one finger at the photograph of Kyungsoo at nine months, pudgy and crawling after a toy. “Fat baby. Told you.”

Kyungsoo grins, shaking his head but letting Baekhyun have the last laugh. 

They slip into an easy silence after that. It’s warm under the blankets, even warmer with Baekhyun so close. Kyungsoo relaxes, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. Kyungsoo relaxes, but he can feel Baekhyun thinking, considering. Kyungsoo knows what he’s thinking about, what he wants to ask. Kyungsoo could answer it now and save them both the trouble, but he waits for Baekhyun to get the courage to ask. He waits and prepares himself to answer without putting up walls or snapping.

He finishes one album, two albums, three.

“If you don’t mind me asking, how did she pass?” Kyungsoo looks up from a photo of his mother and father at his second birthday party just in time to catch the glance that Baekhyun sends his way, likely nervous of overstepping. 

“Cancer,” Kyungsoo has made his peace with that word as much as one can when it’s the reason their loved one is dead. “It’s why I got into the business, actually. I moved to Seoul for a pre-college internship because my mom was always big on education, but a month after I moved, I got a call from a neighbor that my mom had collapsed at the food stand. I rushed home and the doctors found a golf-ball-sized tumor on her pancreas.”

Baekhyun gasps. “Oh fuck, Kyungsoo, oh no.”

It’s the first time Kyungsoo’s told someone about the cancer and hasn’t felt pitied in response. People always like to say they’re sorry like they’re the reason the cancer decided to spread to her lymph nodes and take over her entire body. 

Baekhyun’s reaction, the dread and sadness and heartbreak for someone who he never met, is something that Kyungsoo can actually respond to.

Kyungsoo nods. “The doctors said there wasn’t much they could do outside of fucking palliative care, but the oncologist offered to try something experimental. We had a rainy day fund, but it wasn’t enough because the treatments were from America and not covered by health insurance. I went looking for ways to make a lot of money fast and eventually got desperate and went to the dark web. Ended up on the contracting website, took a job, completed it, and the rest was history.”

He doesn’t mention how hard that first kill was, a low-level gang member that stepped on the wrong toes. Kyungsoo had a shitty handgun he bought on the street and didn’t really know how to use. 

There’s more than one reason as to why Kyungsoo prefers using a knife to fight; he was a scrawny kid growing up without a father, he was a prime target for bullies until he taught himself how to fight, learning that his stature made him lethal at close-range. But he didn’t learn to apply that to his work for at least a year, instead working his ass off at perfecting his aim with as many firearms as possible. His strategy and knack for discreet and untraceable kills didn’t come to life until his twentieth hit.

That first kill, he confronted the mark without any sort of plan, just tracked him into an alley and pulled his gun out. And then he hesitated, standing there with his gun pointed at another man’s chest, shaking like a leaf and frozen in place as the realization that he was about to kill another man settled in his gut. That hesitation nearly got him killed; the mark had lunged forward with a switch knife in hand, seeing his weakness for what it was.

If he hadn’t pulled the trigger out of a startled reflex, he likely would have died then and there.

Instead, the bullet blew half the man’s face apart and he dropped dead onto the cold cement. Blood rushed out and splashed Kyungsoo all down his front, staining him in more ways than one. Kyungsoo didn’t realize what happened until the frantic choking noises stopped. And then he burst into broken sobs, an eighteen-year-old kid in so over his head he couldn’t see the sun. 

That kill still haunts him some nights. Kyungsoo has to work on keeping his breathing even and steady just thinking about it. 

It got easier as he completed more and more contracts, never  _ easy,  _ but not as devastating. He can compartmentalize the act of killing and continue on, shouldering each burden without much thought.

“I don’t enjoy killing, Baekhyun. I never have. When I started, it was all to get enough money to save my mother’s life. And then, after she passed because the treatments just didn’t work. The cancer had spread too far, hit her lymph nodes and just metastasized  _ everywhere.  _ But after she died, I just kept killing because—I was out of my mind with grief, you know? I didn’t know what else to do.” Desperation colors his voice. Kyungsoo turns to Baekhyun, arms open and hands outstretched where they’re resting on his knees, palms to the ceiling. It all comes out of him in a rush, a need to be  _ understood.  _ He wants Baekhyun to see him and know him. 

And Baekhyun nods. “You loved her more than anything,” he whispers, brown eyes so large on his face, so open and trusting. He has seen Kyungsoo more than any other living person, all his facets and faults laid bare over the past week. “You didn’t want to lose her, so you lost yourself. Love brings out the best and the worst in people, huh?”

Kyungsoo wipes at the few tears he hadn’t realized had escaped his eyes. He nods solemnly. “I think… I think I’ve been scared to come home because I knew she would be so disappointed to see what I’ve become. I’m not a good person. Not evil, but not a good person. I hate it but I accept it.”

The storm is still quietly raging outside, rain pattering on the rooftop as the wind howls and lightning lights up the sky in streaks. It fills the quiet between Baekhyun and Kyungsoo. The living room is lit only by the few lamps Kyungsoo trusted to not short circuit and start a fire, and the dim lighting is warm, fuzzy around the edges.

A strange expression crosses Baekhyun’s face, softening his features. He rests his hands atop Kyungsoo’s own. “For what it’s worth,” he whispers, leaning in close until their noses are nearly touching. Kyungsoo’s pulse races in his ears, heart fluttering. “I think you’re one of the best people I’ve ever met.”

* * *

Kyungsoo sits at the kitchen table with a mug of shitty instant coffee and stares blearily out at the morning sky. Breakfast is already served, waiting in the oven so it’s still warm enough to eat when Baekhyun wakes up. Kyungsoo had rolled out of bed first, carefully extricating himself from the blankets and Baekhyun’s limbs that had splayed out across the mattress as he slept. Kyungsoo is still surprised that he isn’t a clingy sleeper. Instead, he makes it his nightly mission to take up as much space on Kyungsoo’s little twin bed as humanly possible. It wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t sleep so hard.

Two days ago, Kyungsoo stumbled while getting out of bed and slammed into his dresser, knocking over the damn Easy-Bake Oven Baekhyun dug out from the closet. The noise was deafening in the quiet of the room, but Baekhyun didn’t even flinch.

He’s a very different person than what Kyungsoo would have believed, even after a week spent on the road. Not that spending a week on the run from highly-trained hitmen is conducive to getting to know the little details about someone. All of the research Kyungsoo did for Baekhyun’s contract, the research he had prided himself on as being comprehensive, ended up being sorely lacking as well. None of it told him Baekhyun would be such a little pain in the ass, never backing down from banter and constantly singing to himself as he wanders around the house. Nothing ever suggested that Baekhyun would willingly risk his own life to save Kyungsoo’s. 

Kyungsoo smiles as Baekhyun’s sleepy grumbles float down the hallway as he shuffles to the bathroom. He supposes it’s better that his research didn’t tell him the finer details of Byun Baekhyun, because now he gets to learn them firsthand.

“Good morning,” Baekhyun smiles, eyes still mostly closed as he enters the kitchen, sniffing around for the coffee pot. 

“Morning.” Kyungsoo fetches their breakfast from the oven and sets it out on the table, taking bites of rice as he watches Baekhyun drown his coffee in milk and sugar. Kyungsoo thinks it disgusting, but Baekhyun downs half his mug in one gulp so it can’t be that horrible. 

Breakfast is a quiet affair. Kyungsoo prefers to follow Baekhyun’s lead when it comes to conversation in the morning, happy to engage in their usual back-and-forth or just relax into the silence. Today seems to be a quieter one. Kyungsoo watches the clouds pass through the sky and makes his way through the kimchi, scrambled eggs, and rice he made out of the slowly dwindling contents of the fridge and pantry. They did manage one late night convenience store run to grab some essential groceries their second day at the house, but they only bought enough to last their stay. 

Kyungsoo was able to use their limited supplies to show off all his years working at the food stand, at least. He still feels a burst of pride when he remembers the look on Baekhyun’s face when he tried Kyungsoo’s chicken stew. 

“Just today and tomorrow left, huh? I think I’ll be a little sad to leave, you know? It just feels so homey here,” Baekhyun says as he pushes the last few grains around his bowl. Kyungsoo hums, fingers tapping against the wood of the table.

They only have one more day left before they leave for Seoul in what will, hopefully, be the last leg of their journey. Kyungsoo has enjoyed the peace, but he’s eager to track Jongin down and end this mess once and for all. As much as he didn’t enjoy being the hunter, being the hunted is significantly more unappealing.

“The house will still be in my name. I can give you my key and you could move in after we’ve finished our business in Seoul.” Kyungsoo stands, finished with his breakfast, and reaches for Baekhyun’s plate as well.

Baekhyun frowns. A little crease forms between his eyebrows. “What are you planning to do once this is all over?”

An uncomfortable feeling washes over Kyungsoo; his stomach twists in on itself and he has to swallow multiple times before he even begins to feel like he can answer. He thinks of the passport Yixing is procuring for him at that very moment, how it was very tacitly hinted that it wouldn’t be too difficult to forge a second one. 

Kyungsoo stands at the sink, scrubbing at the dishes with his back to Baekhyun. “I’m actually focusing on the matter at hand for now. Once that’s all settled I’ll feel much more comfortable planning out my next steps.” It’s a pathetic cop-out of an answer and they both know it, Baekhyun’s disappointment hanging heavy in the air. But he doesn’t push.

The dishes can’t keep him occupied forever, no matter how much he pretends that some of the plates are stained and need extra scrubbing to be truly clean. If he scrubs for too long, Baekhyun will eventually get up and join him with offers to help so that his hands don’t become too pruny. Baekhyun has a strong aversion towards pruny hands, apparently.

Kyungsoo finds his way back to the kitchen table with another mug of coffee not long after he lets all the soapy water in the sink drain out. Baekhyun sits still in his own chair, his own mug empty. He makes no move to refill it and shakes his head when Kyungsoo offers. 

The silence isn’t exactly uncomfortable, but it certainly isn’t the same companionable atmosphere Kyungsoo’s gotten used to with Baekhyun. It drags on. Each seconds lasts an eternity and the coffee Kyungsoo’s quickly chugs only makes it worse.

“What are your plans for the day,” Baekhyun asks.

Kyungsoo thinks for a moment. There are a million things he could do, such as research the layout of the venue the memorial service is being held at, check the house for any damage after years of abandonment, relax in the living room with a book. He smiles, “Would you like to finish that drama with me today?”

“Really?” It comes out startled, confused, as though that wasn’t something Baekhyun would have considered in his wildest dreams. “You want to?”

“Do you think I would ask if I didn’t?”

Baekhyun shakes his head, then nods. He has a little self-deprecating smile on his face, looking up through his bangs at Kyungsoo. “I’d love to.”

“Good.” It’ll be a nice way to pass the morning, at least, relaxing under the blankets with Baekhyun, not having to think about the situation at hand in favor of letting himself be sucked into the troubles of the star-crossed lovers on his computer screen. “I’ll go set it up. Maybe once it’s finished we can look for some mixes for that stupid fucking Easy-Bake oven and I can laugh at you tonight after you give yourself food-posioning.” 

And then shock and confusion color Baekhyun’s face again, mouth dropping open just enough for him to lick his bottom lip. Kyungsoo frowns. “What,” he asks, squinting as he tries to read the other man’s expression.

“I don’t know.” Baekhyun’s gaze drops to the table. They both know he’s lying, and they both know that they both know that he’s lying. Kyungsoo knows Baekhyun is likely an amazing liar in a million other situations, he would have had to be to survive in his parents’ world; here, now, he couldn’t lie to save his life.

Kyungsoo repeats himself, more forcefully, leaning over the table. It’s a small table, Kyungsoo can reach across and grab Baekhyun by the collar without having to leave his chair. “What’s wrong?”

Baekhyun shrugs. His teeth close on his lower lip and Kyungsoo wonders how the damn thing isn’t tougher than leather at this point, somehow still looking soft, if a bit torn up. 

Kyungsoo has to drag his eyes back up to Baekhyun’s. Unnecessary thoughts like to crop up when he stares at Baekhyun’s mouth for too long. He sees vulnerable, nervous brown and sighs, not wanting to push too hard. They’ve both been through too much in the past weeks to deserve being treated roughly.

“I’m just not really used to anyone willingly spending so much time with me. There were nannies and friends at school, but the nannies were paid to put up with me and my friends and I rarely saw each other except in class. So this, you acting like you actually like me, it’s a lot to take in,” Baekhyun laughs, “I mean everything with you has been a lot to take in, but still.”

And Kyungsoo isn’t sure how to respond to that. It makes something deep in his chest ache, cracking wide open into a canyon that begs to swallow Baekhyun whole, to take him in and keep him there until they both turn to dust. It feels a lot like the love he read about in those cheesy romance novels when he was younger. 

Kyungsoo swallows, uncomfortable, because he knows very well that he doesn’t love Baekhyun. But he does care about him more than anyone else he knows. His mother, his father, and Baekhyun—those are the three most important people in Kyungsoo’s life. He should be embarrassed that he has so few people in his life that Baekhyun is so important. He isn’t.

Baekhyun is very easy to care about, for Kyungsoo, that is. He’s got enough wit to go back and forth with Kyungsoo but enough sense to never take their banter too far. He’s smart, courageous, resilient, way too fucking selfless, and an absolute pain in the ass.

“Well, I like your company. More than I should for how annoying you are,” Kyungsoo grins. Baekhyun returns the smile, nose scrunching as a stupid little laugh bubbles out of his mouth.

It draws Kyungsoo gaze back to his lips, soft, pink, bitten from anxiety and fear. An impulse rises up from Kyungsoo’s gut, insistent but not irresistible. 

Kyungsoo doesn’t even bother trying to resist.

Instead, he gets up out of his chair and slowly leans over the table, palms braced on the wood, giving Baekhyun time to move out of the way or tell Kyungsoo to stop. He doesn’t. Baekhyun’s eyes go wide and he blinks, but he’s quick to rise out of his chair as well, meeting Kyungsoo halfway.

Baekhyun’s lips are warm against Kyungsoo’s own. Kyungsoo’s careful not to press too hard, mindful of how sore the skin must be after being constantly chewed on. The kiss is a slow, gentle meeting of lips, a little wet from how Baekhyun had just licked his bottom lip, careful and timid. It isn’t the best kiss Kyungsoo has ever had, but the feeling it gives him settles nice and comfortable in his chest, slotting into the canyon that had yawned open, satisfying. 

It isn’t the best kiss, but it is the most satisfying. He’ll go back for more later, because he can very easily see that it’s going to become something of an addiction, but for now he’s sated.

He settles back in his chair and grins wolfishly at the satisfaction on Baekhyun’s face, that pretty mouth pulled into a pretty smile. 

“Go brush your teeth,” Kyungsoo leans in once more to kiss Baekhyun’s cheek. “You taste like eggs and coffee.”

Baekhyun scoffs, swatting at Kyungsoo, “So do you, you asshole!” But he’s laughing and doesn’t even pretend to fight when Kyungsoo kisses him again, not deterred by the taste of eggs and coffee in the slightest.

It isn’t so bad when it’s mixed with the feeling of Baekhyun’s lips under his.

* * *

Baekhyun’s hand is hot, palm sweating profusely. Kyungsoo can feel it against his own. They’re walking hand-in-hand towards the venue holding Baekhyun’s memorial service with nothing but a few weapons and a plan. All of their things were left behind at a shitty motel seven blocks away, some hole in the wall that didn’t ask any questions about two grown men in sunglasses taking a single room together. 

It honestly wasn’t the worst night’s sleep Kyungsoo had ever had. Baekhyun is a decent partner in bed once Kyungsoo gets all his limbs under control. He isn’t much of a cuddler, but he’s happy to let himself be cuddled.

They arrived in Seoul the night before, dropping by Kyungsoo’s apartment, and immediately settled in at the motel. It was a risk, not staying in the car where they had an instant method of flight. Kyungsoo guessed that the majority of his former colleagues would have already gone through Seoul in search of him and moved on to search the more rural areas of the country. 

Lucky for the both of them that he guessed correctly.

They spent the night at the motel, both of them more than a little on edge, and planned their strategy for infiltrating the memorial service. It didn’t take long. Kyungsoo had been mulling over scenarios and plans since they found out about Jongin attending the event, simply adapting his plans and adding extra precautions after it was revealed to be a memorial service for a still very much alive Baekhyun. 

He has a number of cards hidden up his sleeves in case something goes terribly wrong, but the most basic, simplest, best case scenario version of the plan is get in, find Jongin, get any and all information necessary out of him, get rid of the contract for Kyungsoo’s life and warn the clients against putting out another hit on Kyungsoo  _ or  _ Baekhyun, and get out.

Kyungsoo will search the venue for Jongin, corner him, and then extract any and all information the man has about his co-conspirators. It won’t be nearly as easy as it sounds; Jongin knows about Baekhyun and Kyungsoo rummaging around in his office—Kyungsoo assumes he does, at least, because if he doesn’t it would mean that someone on the inside is working to bring Jongin down as well and Kyungsoo could use that to his advantage when it comes to getting Jongin to cancel the contract. Realistically, Jongin knows that Kyungsoo and Baekhyun know he’ll be at the venue and will therefore be on the lookout.

Baekhyun will enter the vent system. Nearly everyone at the memorial service thinks he’s dead and are familiar enough with his face that they would be able to pick him out of the crowd. While letting everyone find out that Baekhyun is still alive sounded like a good idea when Kyungsoo first thought about it, he quickly realized he had no way of knowing just who wanted Baekhyun dead and didn’t want to risk giving them an open shot at him. And so, Baekhyun will move through the vent system to cover Kyungsoo’s back and provide a bird’s-eye view of the venue to make finding Jongin that much easier.

Now, with the memorial service in full swing, Baekhyun leads Kyungsoo to the venue’s lone unguarded entry point, a broken basement window. “I used to use it to sneak sometimes, just to prove that I could. Never told my parents about it because I didn’t want to lose the only bit of rebellion I could really do without landing myself in hot shit,” Baekhyun gently parts the bushes hiding the window. 

It’s a small window, maybe a meter wide and a meter tall at the very most. Kyungsoo crouches down in front of it and leans in, making sure his shoulders can fit. They can, but he can see that the window is located about three meters up the basement wall and he doesn’t look forward to the drop.

All the broken glass was cleared away long ago, at least. He doesn’t have to worry about slicing himself open. 

“You’re sure that no one else knows about this window?”

Baekhyun nods. “I literally only found it because I was really sad one night while attending an event here and climbed into these bushes to cry. And the part of the basement the window leads to is tucked away in a corner behind a bunch of old Christmas decorations from when the old owners tried to appeal to foreign tourists. If my parents knew about it, they would’ve had it fixed right away. Worried about break-ins, you know?” 

Kyungsoo meets Baekhyun’s satisfied smile, eyebrows raised as he waits for Kyungsoo to laugh. He snorts just to soothe the other man’s ego. Baekhyun’s smile grows and Kyungsoo can’t help but roll his eyes fondly. 

Baekhyun’s confidence, while reassuring, still doesn’t entirely convince him that there aren’t ten different hitmen waiting for him down in the dark. This is the exact sort of thing he would look for if he were casing the building for a hit. 

Still, there’s no other possible way for them to get into the theater, not without risking a gunfight, so he puts his trust in Baekhyun’s word. And then he puts his life in Baekhyun’s hands as well, a handgun pressed into his open palms. “Cover me. I’ll watch your back as best as I can while I’m lowering myself down, you make sure no one is hiding in the shadows to shoot me, got it?”

Baekhyun nods, jaw set, eyebrows furrowed. “I won’t let you down.”

Kyungsoo leans in and presses a kiss to Baekhyun’s lips, drawing out some of the tension in his shoulders, “I know.”

He eases himself backwards through the window and into the dark, dank coldness of the theater’s basement. The window ledge is cold against his fingers, slick with his own sweat.

“Be careful,” Baekhyun whispers. Kyungsoo grunts out an affirmation.

He kicks out his legs just in case there’s anything for him to step onto. His foot brushes a tub of some sort, probably a box of Christmas decorations. Kyungsoo tries to put some of his weight onto it, but he can barely plant his foot before he feels it start to slide away, the tub tipping over. He swears under his breath, hooking his foot under the lip of the lid to pull it back into place even as the muscles in his arms burn from being forced to hold up his entire body. It takes a moment, but Kyungsoo manages to get the tub back into its unstable position before it falls and makes a noise that could alert anyone in the basement to his presence.

His hands start to slip on the window ledge. “Am I good to drop,” he asks. 

Baekhyun nods. “I think so. I haven’t seen any movement yet.” 

Kyungsoo wants to glance down to make sure he isn’t going to land on anything before he lets himself drop down, but he doesn’t want to risk someone sneaking up behind Baekhyun during those few precious seconds. Instead, he takes Baekhyun’s word and lets go of the window. If no one has shot at him yet, it’s likely that they’re either waiting for Baekhyun to come down to get them both at the same time or that Baekhyun was right and no one else knows about the broken window. 

Still, Kyungsoo hisses when the sound of his weight hitting the concrete floor echoes through the silent basement. The moment his feet touch the ground he’s turning on his heel to squint out into the darkness, searching the shadows for any signs of life. 

“Alright, I think it’s safe. Holster the gun and come down.” He turns around to position himself under the window to catch Baekhyun, but the other man is already lowering himself down with practiced ease. He drops without even bothering to look down and lands with a soft thud. Kyungsoo’s actually a little impressed. “Did you do that often?”

Baekhyun turns around with a little smile on his face, cheeks pink in the little bit of light that shines through the window. “Often enough,” he says, “When you live stuffed into a little box, you tend to take every bit of rebellion you can get away with and run with it.”

Kyungsoo shakes his head. “You probably climbed through that window and thought you were so bad,” he chuckles. “You thought you were really getting back at your parents by sneaking into a theater they own and not touching a single thing.”

“Well, it wasn’t like I could just start breaking shit. I didn’t want to get in trouble. My parents, when they bothered to take an interest in me, were very, very strict. I never dared to turn to drugs or alcohol because I was scared of what they’d do.” Baekhyun takes Kyungsoo by the hand, lacing their fingers together and leading him through the basement. Kyungsoo frowns at that but doesn’t pry when Baekhyun doesn’t continue. Baekhyun isn’t shy about offering up information. If he wanted to say more, he would have already. 

The basement is utterly silent except for the sound of their footsteps as they gently make their way to the dumbwaiter. Kyungsoo was apprehensive when Baekhyun first offered it up as a way to get out of the basement without running into anyone. He’s still apprehensive, actually, but Baekhyun swore on everything under the sun that it would be perfectly safe if they went one at a time. The dumbwaiter stops are all left in rarely-used areas of the theater, even on the ground floor where the memorial service is being held.

“If I remember correctly, it’s just a door or two down from the boiler room. I could probably get into the vents from there and then you would be free to go look for Jongin.” Baekhyun lifts the door to the dumbwaiter and gestures to it with both arms. 

Kyungsoo runs a hand over his freshly shaved hair. They had shaved it before leaving Goyang to act as a sort of a disguise. They had considered shaving Baekhyun’s head as well, but Baekhyun was adamant that he would look too strange without his full head of hair. He’d instead decided to raid Kyungsoo’s mother’s old make-up collection. It wasn’t much, only two shades of foundation, a blush, a miniscule eyebrow pencil, and some palettes of eyeshadow, but Baekhyun brought every last usable bit with them to Seoul.

Kyungsoo thinks it was very unfair of him to do so. He looks even more handsome now, eyes highlighted by the soft pink eyeshadow. He found a tube of body glitter in the nightstand at the motel and pressed some of it along his cheekbones. It’s very distracting, especially with how he wears one of Kyungsoo’s old suits that they scavenged from Kyungsoo’s apartment, darting in and out in the middle of the night because they needed disguises. 

Kyungsoo walked into the bathroom door when Baekhyun first showed him the look. He’s absolutely certain Baekhyun will never let him live that down.

The only consolation he has is the memory of Baekhyun’s face after he finished putting a bit of make-up on Kyungsoo, pretty brown eyes blinking dumbly as he licked his lips. Kyungsoo doesn’t think he looks much different than normal, just that his cheeks are more defined, his eyes appearing more open and less angry after being lined with the eyebrow pencil.

That’s going to be the best element of their weak attempts at disguise, according to Baekhyun. Kyungsoo’s former colleagues are all so used to seeing him scowling that they won’t even take a second look at someone who looks so pleasant to be around.

Kyungsoo isn’t sure exactly how, but he’s going to make Baekhyun pay for that one once this is all over.

“Are you completely sure about this,” Kyungsoo asks, heart beating faster as Baekhyun fits himself inside the dumbwaiter. It looks so old and fragile, as though it will break and drop any second. There isn’t really much to worry about now, considering there’s nowhere for it to go right now, but he worries that it’ll suddenly break as it carries one of them up to the ground floor. If the fall doesn’t kill them, anyone who hears the commotion of a dumbwaiter dropping down a good ten feet likely will.

Baekhyun just rolls his eyes. “I’m  _ absolutely _ sure. I literally used this thing last time I broke in. Would you rather take the stairs and risk running into one of your friends from work? You know, the ones who will shoot the two of us on sight?”

“And what if one of them is waiting for you? What will you do then when you’re stuck in the dumbwaiter?” Kyungsoo smirks at the way Baekhyun’s mouth opens and closes, eyes blinking quickly as he thinks.

He clears his throat and pulls down the cover for the dumbwaiter, hiding behind the metal screen, “Then I’ll scream and you’ll hit the button to bring me back down! Just hit the damn button, okay? The more time we argue, the less time we have to find Jongin and get out of this mess.”

Kyungsoo has to admit that Baekhyun is right, both about the dumbwaiter and how their argument about using it is wasting precious time. He doesn’t tell Baekhyun that though, just jams the button to send the dumbwaiter up and waits anxiously as he listens to it begin its ascent. He keeps his thumb hovering over the button to bring it back down, waiting for Baekhyun’s scream, heart thudding in his chest, stomach twisted with nerves.

It doesn’t come. Instead, the dumbwaiter comes back down a few minutes later absolutely empty. Kyungsoo climbs in and grits his teeth, back pressed to the wall, hand on the hilt of his knife, as it carries him up.

Baekhyun’s smug face is waiting for him when the dumbwaiter stops. “Told you,” he whispers. Kyungsoo climbs out of the dumbwaiter and then reaches over to pinch Baekhyun’s ear, grinning when Baekhyun’s smirk drops and he starts swatting at the fingers pulling lightly at his ear. 

“You’re fucking lucky you were, Byun Baekhyun. Such a pain in the ass.” He considers using his grip on Baekhyun’s ear to haul him in for a kiss, but decides against it, aware of how exposed they are, how out in the open and vulnerable.

Anyone could come down the hall right now and spot them. It’s unlikely, considering according to Baekhyun this part of the theater is never used for events, but still possible. Kyungsoo expects that sort of due diligence from Suho and Xiumin. He knows he would be constantly patrolling the lesser-used of a venue if he was hunting down someone with his own experience and skill set.

And so, he releases Baekhyun’s ear and takes his hand instead. He is acutely aware that this may be one of the last times he has the chance to. 

Kyungsoo could be gunned down in the middle of the venue, could be dragged out to an alley and stabbed to death. Someone could notice Baekhyun in the vents and end his life with a well-aimed shot. Even if this all goes favorably and they escape the memorial with their lives intact, they haven’t discussed what will happen after, if Baekhyun will magically come back to life, if Kyungsoo will take Yixing up on his offer of procuring a second set of papers.

He holds Baekhyun’s hand, uncaring of how fucking sweaty it is, and tells him to direct them both to the boiler room. 

Baekhyun was right about the boiler room; it’s right next to the dumbwaiter, just two doors down on the left, and it has an access point for the vent system. Kyungsoo wonders how many nights he spent just wandering the theater by himself to become so familiar with the layout, how lonely he must have been that it seemed like a good way to spend his time.

“You need to be very quiet in the vents,” Kyungsoo shoves a set of floor-to-ceiling shelves against the wall beneath the access point. It’s high enough that Baekhyun will need help getting in, but he should be able to get out on his own in case anything does happen to Kyungsoo. “Stay on your stomach as much as possible and just drag yourself along, alright? You’ll make too much noise if you crawl, so don’t do it unless you absolutely have to.”

Baekhyun nods, chewing on his lower lip as he starts to climb up the shelves. “You be careful too, okay? Don’t do anything stupid,” he says. He stops, climbs back down to the ground. He turns to Kyungsoo with a determined set to his jaw. “And don’t try to tell me to leave you behind if you get hurt. Didn’t work the first time and won’t work now. We’re a team.”

Kyungsoo may or may not have been preparing to tell him exactly that. He sighs out a laugh, smiling and reaching out to give the other man a gentle shove in the shoulder. He leans in close to whisper conspiratorially, “There isn’t anyone I’d rather have on my team.”

Baekhyun smiles, cheeks blushing pink. He cups Kyungsoo’s face with both hands and pulls him in for one last kiss before he clambers up the shelves and into the vent with a small boost from Kyungsoo.

Once he’s safely in the vents, Kyungsoo watches him wriggle his way out to where the memorial service is taking place. He looks ridiculous, something he is very aware of and makes sure to hiss at Kyungsoo for laughing about before disappearing around a curve in the vents.

Kyungsoo adjusts his outfit one last time before forcing a small smile on his lips and stepping back out into the hallway. 

A few workers pass him carrying trays of hors d’oeuvres and champagne. He takes a glass and asks one of the servers for directions back to the memorial service. “Would you mind directing me back to the main area? The men’s bathroom was full but I had heard there was another one somewhere around here. If there is, I certainly can’t find it, and now I can’t find the regular men’s bathroom either.”

“Of course, sir,” the server replies with a smile that is somehow faker than Kyungsoo’s. “Just follow me.”

He follows the server to the main area. It’s bustling, more like a gala than a memorial service. Kyungsoo is surprised at how opulent it all is. No one is wearing black, all the decorations are gold and silver and sparkling under the light of the chandeliers. There are flower centerpieces at every table and two enormous wreaths positioned beside either door to the actual auditorium, but they’re bright, colorful, more fitting a spring equinox celebration than a funeral for a man that was allegedly murdered in an alley. Kyungsoo peeks inside the auditorium as he walks to the bathroom and sees an even larger wreath up on the stage, an old photo of Baekhyun in the center. 

It’s the only photograph of Baekhyun in the entire venue.

The more Kyungsoo looks around, the more he realizes how little the memorial service  _ is  _ a memorial service. It’s more of a social gathering than anything, full of high-society socialites chatting about business and the latest gossip as they stand around, drinking and snacking on deviled eggs. It’s all so fake, gilded, beautiful on the outside but devoid of absolutely any meaning whatsoever. No one’s saying a single thing about Baekhyun. No one even looks upset that he’s supposedly dead.

Except for Jongin, that is. 

Kyungsoo spots him just before he disappears into the bathroom, not wanting to arouse any suspicion from the server. The other man is standing at a table with a few other young people; they’re the most subdued of the entire theater, likely all of them having been Baekhyun’s schoolmates, but Jongin is the only one who looks truly upset. He’s staring down into his glass of champagne with a morose look on his face, grieving.

He’s still there when Kyungsoo comes back out of the bathroom. The other people at his table try to engage him in conversation, but he never responds. He’s guilty, thinking that he had a hand in Baekhyun’s untimely death.

That’s good. He’ll be more likely to work with Kyungsoo once he knows Baekhyun is not, in fact, dead. It also means that any relationship he has with his co-conspirators has likely soured. Getting Jongin to betray them might not be as difficult as Kyungsoo thought. Now he just has to get Jongin alone and try to talk some sense into him, though that is already proving to be the most difficult part of the night. He knows Kyungsoo is after him and he makes sure to stick close to the other party-goers.

Kyungsoo hides in the crowd and circles Jongin from afar. Jongin doesn’t seem to notice him, so caught up in his own guilt and grief that the only measure he takes for his own safety is to not let himself be caught alone. 

It leaves Kyungsoo constantly scanning the room for an opening to drag Jongin away. He’s forced to split his attention between Jongin and making sure that none of his former colleagues are closing in on him either. It’s a race, a deadly game of who will reach their target first.

Suho appears once. He passes through the lobby of the theater with a purpose to his strides, likely scouring the building for any sign of Kyungsoo. He glances over the crowd attending the memorial service, gaze passing over the table Kyungsoo is standing at but his camouflage does its job and Suho heads for the elevator with a scowl on his brow.

Kyungsoo lets out a breath as the elevator doors close.

He leaves the group he had been pretending to be a part of, detaching himself from the fringe of people surrounding the little table, and detours around the buffet table stocked full of deserts. He peruses the goods, picks up two cookies to share with Baekhyun later. A quick glance up at the vent in the ceiling shows him Baekhyun’s eager eyes, staring down at the dessert table like a man possessed. He snorts softly and wraps the cookies up in napkins and shoves them in his pocket for safe-keeping.

“Worried they’ll run out?”

Kyungsoo looks up and has to bite his tongue to keep himself from gasping as Kim Jongin grins at him from across the table of deserts, a small iced brownie on his plate. And Kyungsoo realizes that Jongin, for all the digging and researching he must have done to find out who killed his father, has no idea who Kyungsoo is. He doesn’t know Kyungsoo’s real name, what he looks like, anything about him aside from his street name of D.O. and his killcount. 

“Saving some for a friend, actually,” Kyungsoo manages to get out after a moment, clearing his throat to hide his surprise. “He likes sweets.”

Jongin nods. He takes a swig from his champagne and points with his pinky to the tiny cakes a ways down the table. “Those are really good. A bit rich for me, but if your friend likes sweets he’ll probably enjoy them. Baekhyun certainly did.”

There’s a moment where Kyungsoo worries if Jongin actually does know who he is and is just playing with him. He keeps his eyes on Jongin’s and searches for the slightest hint of insincerity, that he’s making a little joke at Kyungsoo’s expense. He doesn’t find it, and so he lets his hackles rest, fighting the urge to go for his knife. “You were a good friend of Baekhyun’s,” he asks instead, grabbing two of the little cakes to take with him as well.

“Yeah. One of his best friends, actually. Not that Baekhyun could actually have best friends. He was a very private person, if you’d believe it. He had to be to survive with parents like his. They didn’t care about him, but if they ever found him sullying their name…” Jongin heaves a sigh, smiling a smile that is anything but happy, tinged with an anger he subdues only a second later. “I was never able to learn much about him, but I knew he loved sweets.”

Kyungsoo should know better than to act on impulse. That sort of shit is for the inexperienced, those who have never had blood caked under their fingernails, sunken so deeply into their skin that it feels like it’ll never come out. But his impulse, his  _ gut,  _ tells him to act, sounding far too much like Baekhyun, and he can’t help but listen.

He meets Jongin’s eyes and offers a small, secret smile. “He still does.” 

Jongin’s eyes widen, jaw dropping in confusion, then closing and dropping once more in realization. His boogey man is standing right in front of him and he didn’t even know it. “Y-you..your…”

“Do Kyungsoo, nice to meet you,” Kyungsoo whispers over the dull hum of so many people chatting at once in such a small space. “Or it would be nice if you hadn’t put out a hit on me.”

“I’ll scream if you try anything.” Jongin makes no move to run though, and Kyungsoo knows he has a very short window to convince him to come with him before he comes to his senses and makes a scene.

“And then you’ll get both myself and Baekhyun killed. You’re already wrestling with the guilt of his death now, when he’s still alive. Would you like to find out how much worse it feels when you actually watch someone die because of your actions?” His heart races in his chest as he curses himself for being so impulsive and not at least attempting to get Jongin somewhere secluded before revealing his identity.

Jongin’s eyes narrow and he snarls quietly. “You’re a filthy fucking liar. Baekhyun is dead, his parents confirmed it with DNA.”

Kyungsoo snorts, “Have you seen the results of the DNA test yourself? I bet not. Look up and you can see for yourself who is lying about Baekhyun.”

And Kyungsoo nearly fucking falls to pieces in relief when Jongin does, glancing up to where Baekhyun is watching them from the vent system. It takes a moment for Jongin to register what he’s seeing, but Kyungsoo can see the moment he really  _ sees  _ Baekhyun, relief and joy washing over his face. 

“He’s alive,” Jongin states, but it sounds more like a question. Kyungsoo grunts an affirmation. “Then how? Why all this? Fuck, he’s alive. I thought you killed him once you realized you didn’t need a hostage anymore.”

“He grew on me,” Kyungsoo admits. “The body they found in Daegu was a hitman I had to kill to keep us safe. Why they said it was Baekhyun? Absolutely no fucking clue. That’s something you’d have to ask the Daegu police about. But for now, I’d like to ask you to accompany me down the hall for a short conversation.”

Jongin stiffens, scowling at Kyungsoo, distrust radiating off of him in waves. And Kyungsoo expects that, would be a bit unnerved if Jongin went without a hint of protest. “How can I trust you to not kill me the second we’re alone?”

“You can’t, not really. You’ve put out hits on both of us and that really pisses me off. But I promised Baekhyun I wouldn’t hurt you unless I absolutely had to. So, can we do this the easy way and have a civil discussion or do I have to make you come with me?” Kyungsoo holds Jongin’s gaze and refuses to back down. The air between them stretches tight, so tense that one wrong move will make it snap and shatter into furious pieces.

But then Jongin drops his gaze to the table and huffs, “Where are we going?”

Kyungsoo smiles and gestures Jongin towards the hallway leading to the right of the event, back towards the boiler room and the access point to the vent system. They fall in step, walking side-by-side, neither one wanting to give the other his back. “This way, if you don’t mind. I’d like to make sure I know Baekhyun’s close to an exit if things go sour. I’m sure you can appreciate that.”

Jongin  _ hates  _ him, that much is apparent. Jongin hates Kyungsoo enough to want him dead, but they share a fondness for Baekhyun and that’s enough to pull some compliance out of him. He follows Kyungsoo down the hall and into a room marked for costume storage. They part the second the door closes, standing on opposite sides of the room. Jongin looks like a caged animal, his entire body tense as if he’s waiting for Kyungsoo to take out a gun and shoot him.

Actually, considering he was the one to find his father’s body, he knows about Kyungsoo’s affinity for knives and is waiting for Kyungsoo to lunge at him and slit his throat.

It’s lucky for the both of them that Kyungsoo has no intention of doing either of those things.

“Let’s cut to the chase,” Kyungsoo starts, glancing up to make sure Baekhyun is safely situated in the vents above. He doesn’t want to lose track of him, not when he has no clue what other sorts of schemes are running below that sham of a memorial service. A part of him worries that it was set up to lure Baekhyun in, but he has to keep that thought firmly in the back of his mind because he simply doesn’t have the emotional bandwidth to think about that in addition to everything else. “You need to cancel the contract for my life and tell me who you’re working for.” 

Jongin’s mouth turns into a deep frown, arms crossed over his chest, “And why the fuck would I do that? In case you haven’t noticed, I want you  _ dead.  _ You killed my father. I was a fucking kid and I walked in on my father’s dead body because of  _ you.  _ I entered into this goddamn mess specifically to see you killed. Why would I ever help you?”

“Because you’re a fucking moron who doesn’t see you’re being used.” Kyungsoo takes a step forward. Jongin’s eyes widen and he takes a step back. 

“Because you’re taking your grudge against me out on Baekhyun.” One step forward, one step back.

“Because I can offer information you’re going to need if you really want to avenge your father.” Another step forward, another step back.

“Because if you don’t do it on your own, I’ll  _ make _ you.” Kyungsoo takes another step forward and keeps going until he’s got Jongin backed against a wall, so close he can feel the other man’s shaky, uneven breaths against his face. “Why do you think the people ordering you around agreed to help you? Do you  _ really  _ think people as powerful as they are would need your help taking me down?”

“They… They asked me first. They said they knew about my history with D.O. and also wanted him dead. They asked me to join them, said they already had it all planned out, just wanted to give me a shot at revenge,” Jongin explains, though it’s obvious that he realizes how ridiculous everything sounds as the words leave his mouth. He grimaces and his gaze drops to the floor as he realizes he’s been played.

“And you were so excited at the prospect of killing me that you never bothered to really think anything through,” Kyungsoo shakes his head. “God, do you even know who you’re fucking working with?”

Jongin shakes his head, swallowing audibly. Fucking teenagers, so impulsive and stupid that they’ll dive headfirst into awful situations without thinking; Kyungsoo would know, he was the idiot teenager who decided to make a career out of murder. “I didn’t even question why they wanted to use Baekhyun as bait. I didn’t like it, but I figured he’d be okay in the end, that the others would get to you before you got to him. But Baekhyun was never meant to be bait, was he?”

Kyungsoo breathes in deeply through his nose once, twice, until he feels calm enough to talk to Jongin without screaming. “I don’t think so. I don’t have any evidence, but I’m pretty sure he is who whoever you’re working for  _ actually  _ wants dead. My death was promised to draw you in, and you were just going to be the one to take the fall in case the police dug deep enough to find out about the contract on Baekhyun’s life.”

“Fuck,” Jongin sighs, “Fuck.  _ Fuck!  _ How did I not see it? What am I supposed to do now?” He runs his fingers through his hair, looking every bit of the traumatized kid he is. He’s a boy who lost his father and wanted revenge, a boy who was thrust to a position of immense power without anyone to guide him and found himself a puppet on someone else’s strings.

Guilt washes down Kyungsoo’s spine, biting back pity at the way Jongin looks so absolutely lost. He remembers that look on his own face after his mother’s funeral, when he threw himself into his work. Losing a parent is like being tossed out into a storming ocean with nothing to hold onto. If one doesn’t make their own life raft, they drown. Kyungsoo’s raft was the monotony of being a hitman, Jongin’s was revenge.

He shrugs. “That’s up to you,” he says as softly as he can, gentle. “You’ve got a lot of choices, not all of them good. You could try to kill me yourself here and now, but I can promise you that won’t work out well for you. You can alert the people you work for and the other hitmen that Baekhyun and I are here, but then you’d have Baekhyun’s blood on your hands for the rest of your life. And that guilt won’t ever go away, I promise you that. Or...”

A few heartbeats pass in silence as Jongin stares at Kyungsoo, nervous, hesitant, unsure. He looks up to where Baekhyun is watching silently from the vent, likely the only person in this entire building he cares about. “Or?” 

Kyungsoo smiles, one hand slipping into his pocket to grasp the flash drive he made the night before.

_ “Or _ you can cancel the hit and tell me everything you know about the people you work for so that I can keep Baekhyun and myself alive. And, in return, I will give you everything you need to know about the people who hired me to kill your father. I understand you wanting me dead for killing him, but it won’t be real revenge. You want that? You need the people who were willing to pay me big fucking money to end his life.”

“And you can give them to me?” Jongin watches him with suspicion, lips pursed as he thinks.

Kyungsoo nods. He pulls out the flash drive and holds it up to Jongin in the palm of his hand, offering, “I’ll give you every last bit of information I have. Names, addresses, phone numbers, the reasons they gave for wanting him dead, their plans for after I killed him—chatty fucking group, honestly. Not sure why they would tell their hired killer all that, but it means you could easily hire any of my former colleagues to take them out for you. Even better, there’s a video on here where I confess to the murder and implicate them all in their roles leading up to his death. You could take this flash drive to the police and use it to send them all to jail for the rest of their lives.”

“Is this for real, Baekhyun? Is he lying to me?” Jongin reaches into his own pocket and pulls out two phones before he even hears Baekhyun’s answer, a smartphone that is likely Jongin’s actual phone and a burner flip phone.

“Kyungsoo’s a lot of things,” Baekhyun whispers from the vent, probably scared of the sound echoing back to the memorial service, “but he’s not a liar.”

Jongin lets out a hum that sounds more like a groan and taps the smartphone against his forehead, grimacing. Kyungsoo waits as patiently as one can in that sort of situation. He watches as Jongin heaves out a heavy sigh. “Fuck, fine. This doesn’t change anything. I still want you dead and will happily take the first opportunity I see to make that happen once Baekhyun’s out of the way, got it? I don’t forgive you.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to,” Kyungsoo dips his head in acknowledgement. 

“I better not fucking regret this.” Jongin presses his thumb to the home button of the phone and begins to tap at the screen with his lips pressed in a line of displeasure, forehead creased and eyes narrowed as he stares at the screen.

Kyungsoo’s face breaks into a grin when Jongin turns the phone around to show the cancellation receipt for Kyungsoo’s contract. Jongin then hands over the flip phone and snatches the flash drive out of Kyungsoo’s palm. “The people I was working with sent me that phone to contact them. I honestly don’t know anything about them besides the number in that phone. I added extra security measures to hide my location, so they shouldn’t be able to track you if you decide to call them. But I wouldn’t bother. Just run before they have time to think of a new plan.”

If Kyungsoo was a less determined man, maybe a bit smarter, he would do just that. But he’s certain that Jongin’s former co-conspirators are somewhere in the theater and he wants to know who they are, know who to avoid and look out for. A more prideful, angry part of him wants to make sure they know that their bullshit stops now.

No more schemes, no more running for their lives. If all they want is Baekhyun out of the picture, that’s fine, Kyungsoo will make sure he finds a new life, a better life, somewhere far away from Seoul. If the client is determined to see Baekhyun dead, Kyungsoo will happily acquaint them with the muzzle of his favorite gun.

He waves Jongin out of the room and watches him disappear back into the crowd, one hand in his pocket as he fiddles with his new flash drive. Then Kyungsoo flips open the phone and finds the single number in the recent calls list. 

“You’re going to call them, aren’t you?” Kyungsoo looks up at Baekhyun and nods. He offers a smile that Baekhyun returns without a moment’s hesitation. “Good. I want to know who was willing to go through all this trouble just to have me killed. It just wouldn’t feel right to not know. I’d have to spend the rest of my life watching my back no matter where I go.”

And they can’t have that, so Kyungsoo walks back out to the memorial service to find that everyone has filed into the auditorium. 

When he enters, taking a spot in the very back near a wall, he sees the Byuns are standing up on the stage with a microphone. They, at least, are dressed in all black, mourning the loss of their only son. He wonders how Baekhyun feels seeing his parents like this, grieving for him.

Baekhyun appears at the vent access point not far from Kyungsoo, staring out at the sea of people. His face is impassive as he scans the crowd, waiting for Kyungsoo to make the call and expose the people behind this mess. He carefully avoids looking towards the stage. Kyungsoo can’t blame him. It must be more than a little disturbing to be a party to one’s own funeral.

“Good evening, everyone,” Baekhyun’s father steps up to the microphone. “We are all gathered today to remember our son, Byun Baekhyun.”

Kyungsoo’s thumb hovers over the call button. A part of him wants to wait and listen to the speech, let Baekhyun hear for himself how much his parents felt about him, but he feels uneasy knowing that Suho and Xiumin are somewhere in the building. There’s too big of a risk that they have yet to check their phones, have yet to see that the contract for his life has been canceled. And even if they know there’s no reward to be found in killing him, they may just want him dead after the wild goose chase they were sent on.

Kyungsoo calls the number in the burner phone. He puts it up to his ear.

Up on stage, Baekhyun’s mother steps away from the microphone and reaches into her purse to pull out a flip phone. She opens it, presses it to her ear, completely unfazed.

_ “Hello? Jongin? Is something wrong? Is D.O. dead?” _

Kyungsoo’s jaw drops and he chokes on his own spot, frozen in place. He nearly screams down the line at her, suddenly filled with a vicious, burning rage. Never in a million years would he have imagined that it would be the Byuns on the other line, pulling all the strings. 

They did all this, manipulating Jongin, luring Kyungsoo in, carrying out this entire fucking scheme, just to see their own  _ son  _ murdered. And all because of the business—it has to be because of the stupid fucking business, inheritance and power plays and politics. 

He wishes had a better gun than the shitty handgun on his hip. He’s not as good of a shot as Xiumin, but he knows he could take out the two of them from this distance with ease if he had something a bit more substantial. Baekhyun is a good person, a good, kind, sweet, genuine person—more than that, he is their _child,_ the child they’re waxing poetic about up on stage, and they would have had him killed.

He’s so fucking  _ angry.  _ He’s so mad that he can’t fucking see straight, that he could strangle Baekhyun’s parents with his bare fucking hands for putting them both through this.

And then he’s heartbroken because  _ Baekhyun.  _ He looks up to see Baekhyun with a hand over his mouth, tears falling down his face as he sobs silently, eyes locked on the stage where Baekhyun’s mother is hanging up the phone and slipping it back into her purse. He slowly begins scrambling back into the vent system. Watching him disappear from view snaps Kyungsoo out of his rage-filled trance.

Kyungsoo snaps the phone in half, tossing it to the floor. He manages to make it out of the auditorium before breaking into a dead sprint back towards the boiler room. To Baekhyun.

Nothing else matters, not his anger, not revenge. He just needs to get to Baekhyun. 

Suho appears as he turns a corner, mouth open and a scowl on his brow. Kyungsoo punches him as hard as he can in the face and feels a vicious sort of glee when he goes down and doesn’t get back up. He doesn’t have time for anymore fucking games. He leaps over Suho’s fallen form and keeps running.

Baekhyun is just throwing himself out of the vents when Kyungsoo bursts into the boiler room. He’s gasping for air, sobbing so hard it shakes his frame and Kyungsoo doesn’t bother to let him climb down the shelves himself, instead grabbing him around the waist and gently pulling him back down to the ground. He holds Baekhyun tight when he collapses into his arms, swaying them from side-to-side as he presses a rough kiss to Baekhyun’s temple.

“Wh-why,” he cries into Kyungsoo’s shoulder. “They’re my parents. Why? Why would they? They’re my  _ parents.” _

“I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I don’t know, but I’m so sorry. Oh, God, Baekhyun, I’m sorry.” Kyungsoo can only hold him and listen as he sobs, broken and devastated. He’s nearly screaming into Kyungsoo’s shoulder, fingers twisted in the fabric of his suit. He babbles incoherently, crying too hard to get any real words out. What he does manage to say is heartbreaking, asking Kyungsoo why his parents would want to kill him, why they didn’t love him.

Kyungsoo doesn’t know. He doesn’t have any answers. All he can do is hold him close and pour his heart into the kisses he presses to Baekhyun’s hair.

“Baek, Baekhyunnie, we can’t stay here,” he whispers after some time has passed, the memorial service having finished long ago, voices occasionally passing by the boiler room door as the staff clean up the venue. Baekhyun is still crying, shaking in Kyungsoo’s arms. He nods and tries to disentangle himself, hiccuping uncontrollably, but Kyungsoo shakes his head, instead grabbing Baekhyun underneath his thighs and lifting him up. “I’ve got you. I’ll carry you.”

“Wh-what?” Baekhyun pulls his face out of Kyungsoo’s shoulder to stare at him with red, swollen eyes, face blotchy from tears. “I’ll walk,” he whispers through a hoarse throat. “You-your concussion. Not supposed to do anything strenuous. I’ll walk. I’m not a b-baby just because I’m crying.”

Kyungsoo nods, “I know. I know you’re not. But you’re hurting, so please, let me take care of you. Fuck the concussion, you’re not that heavy. We’ll go out the back and I’ll carry us back to the hotel and we’ll decide where we go from there, okay?” 

Baekhyun puts up a few more token protests, but then nods and relaxes into Kyungsoo’s hold, directing him to the back exit through his tears. 

It’s chilly outside, the breeze making goosebumps break out along Kyungsoo’s arms. Baekhyun shivers, still crying but more subdued, worn out. “Why would they do this to me? I know we fought, but I thought...I’m still their son. And they want me dead. I tried to be a good son. I tried to make them happy. If they didn’t want me to inherit the business, I would’ve just stepped down. Th-they didn’t have to... Just...just why?” Baekhyun wraps his arms around Kyungsoo’s neck and sniffles. Kyungsoo feels his own heart break at just how small he sounds, how vulnerable and scared.

“I don’t know,” Kyungsoo cranes his neck to kiss the apple of his cheek. “I don’t know. And I’m so, so fucking sorry that this happened. But you’re not alone. I’m here for you. I’m here for you and I won’t let them get to you.”

“Okay,” Baekhyun whispers, but he still sounds so defeated, hiccuping breaths puffing out against Kyungsoo’s neck. Kyungsoo just holds Baekhyun tighter and carries him all the way to the motel.

* * *

The first thing Baekhyun does when Kyungsoo gently lowers him to sit on the motel bed is look up at him with bloodshot eyes. “Fuck me,” he says. His hands shake as he attempts to undo the buttons of his shirt, kicking off his shoes and socks.

Kyungsoo blinks, freezing from where he’d sat down by the door to take off his own socks and shoes. “What?”

“Fuck me.” Again, more determined. “I want you to fuck me.” Baekhyun manages to get his suit jacket off and half the buttons on his shirt undone. He stares at Kyungsoo, begging with his eyes, imploring.

“Baekhyun,” Kyungsoo trails off. He swallows around the lump in his throat, a cold bundle of nerves growing in his gut as he watches Baekhyun struggle with his clothes. “Baekhyun, no. We can’t.”

“We can. I’m asking you to. You said you find me attractive, right?” Kyungsoo nods. He doesn’t want to feed any sort of insecurity on top of the emotional shit storm Baekhyun’s trying to weather. “And I think you’re hot. So wh-why is there a problem? Just fuck me.” Baekhyun’s shirt hits the dirty motel carpet. He starts to fuss with the button of his pants.

Kyungsoo rises to stand, heart aching in his chest as he watches Baekhyun desperately try to undress himself, getting ready for sex he doesn’t really want. He kneels between Baekhyun’s spread legs and lays his hands over Baekhyun’s to still them, bringing them to his lips so he can press soft kisses to the knuckles. “No, Baekhyun. I don’t want to fuck you, not like this. It’s not going to make the pain stop.” Above him, Baekhyun lets out a quiet whimper.

“Please. Please, Soo, fuck me.” Tear drops roll down Baekhyun’s cheeks, dripping off his chin as he begins to cry all over again. Kyungsoo shakes his head. 

It’s not right, not what Baekhyun really wants. What he wants is to stop hurting, to forget that his parents want him dead. He wants Kyungsoo to fuck him so that he doesn’t have to think about it anymore. But that won’t make anything better. Like how Kyungsoo threw himself into his work, how Jongin clung to revenge, Baekhyun trying to lose himself in sex won’t do anything but grant a temporary reprieve from the pain. And then it’ll just come back even stronger because he’s refused to process it.

“I won’t,” Kyungsoo tips his head back to meet Baekhyun’s eyes. “Not now. You are so beautiful and I will fucking  _ leap _ at the chance to fuck you at any other time, but not now.” The way he begs, face streaked with tears, almost make Kyungsoo want to give in and help him feel better for however long they can make the sex last. He doesn’t though. 

“I-I just want—touch me. Please, please,  _ please,  _ Kyungsoo. I won’t ask you for anything else ever again. Just please, I need you to help me.”

He gently urges Baekhyun back from the edge of the bed and crawls up onto the mattress to join him. “Then let me help you. Let me  _ really  _ help you.” He wraps one arm around Baekhyun’s shoulders, the other around his waist, before tipping them both onto their sides and letting Baekhyun burrow into his chest. Kyungsoo will touch him. He’ll touch him, kiss him, hold him, let him cry and scream and rage in Kyungsoo’s arms until the sun rises if that’s what he wants.

And Baekhyun does. When he finally settles, realizing Kyungsoo isn’t going to fuck him, he starts sobbing all over again. Kyungsoo holds him through it, doing the little that he can to make him feel better. 

“Why don’t they love me? Why wasn’t I enough? I still love them, why don’t they love me,” Baekhyun’s voice breaks. His nails dig into Kyungsoo’s skin through the fabric of his dress shirt. Kyungsoo just smooths his hair back from his face and wipes away his tears. “D-do you? Do you love me?”

Kyungsoo squeezes him tight. “No,” he whispers, kissing his forehead with all the tenderness he has in him, refusing to let go when Baekhyun flinches and tries to roll away. “No, I don’t. But I can. I will, if given the chance. You’re easy to love, Baekhyun. You’re enough. You’re  _ everything.  _ It’s not your fault that they don’t see it.”

“You could love me? You promise?”

“Remember what you told Jongin? I’m many things, but I’m not a liar. And I’m half in love with you already.” Baekhyun relaxes at that. He rests his head on Kyungsoo’s arm and lets the sadness roll through him. He doesn’t fight when Kyungsoo pulls him farther up the bed so that he can kiss him on the lips, only cringing when Kyungsoo pulls off his own dress shirt to wipe at his face.

“Stop,” Baekhyun hiccups, “It’ll get all gross. I ruined your shirt enough already by crying all over it.” Kyungsoo shrugs and kisses the tip of his nose, uncaring of the way Baekhyun sniffles or how dangerously close he is to getting snot on his lips.

“It’s just a shirt, Baek. Let it get dirty.” He silences any protests by kissing Baekhyun hard on the lips, sucking softly on his lower lip to make sure Baekhyun hasn’t bitten it raw again. Kyungsoo smiles when they part. He stares at Baekhyun over the little bit of space between their faces and hopes he can feel just how much Kyungsoo cares about him, how deeply the warm feeling in his chest runs. “You’re so beautiful.”

Baekhyun snorts. “I’ve been crying for, like, two hours. I look like shit.”

“Doesn’t mean you’re not beautiful.” Baekhyun’s tears finally dry up, leaving him looking utterly exhausted, only grumbling when Kyungsoo shifts around to cover them with the comforter. “Want to get a shower in a little bit? When you’re ready?”

“Together,” Baekhyun asks. “I thought you said no sex.”

Kyungsoo narrows his eyes and nips at Baekhyun’s nose to make him squeak and try to flinch back. He can’t, Kyungsoo’s holding him much too tightly for that. “No sex. But I can wash you, if you want. I want to.”

Baekhyun thinks for a little while, blinking as he stares somewhere above Kyungsoo’s shoulder. Kyungsoo scratches through the shorter hairs at the back of his head and waits silently, patiently. If Baekhyun doesn’t want a shower, or doesn’t want to shower together, that’s perfectly fine, Kyungsoo just thought he would like to feel taken care of. 

Eventually, Baekhyun nods, though he asks for a little more time and snuggles into Kyungsoo’s arms, getting impossibly closer. “Please,” he whispers, “I would like that.”

He stays as close as he physically can for the rest of the night. He plasters himself to Kyungsoo’s side as they undress outside the shower, shivering as they wait for the water to warm. It makes it hard to wash him; Kyungsoo has to physically hold him still and take a step back to scrub him down with the cheap, scratchy motel washcloth. 

Baekhyun looks absolutely at peace while Kyungsoo washes his hair, at least. He has a little smile on his face, letting out soft noises as fingers scratch along his scalp, running through his hair to make sure every last bit of shampoo has been rinsed out. 

Baekhyun makes sure to return the favor as well. There isn’t much hair for him to wash on Kyungsoo’s head, but he takes his time washing Kyungsoo’s body. It’s the most intimate Kyungsoo has been with another person in a long time, open and vulnerable in mind and body. Even after they’re both clean, they stand under the spray together until the water runs cold, just holding each other and letting the stress from the past weeks swirl down the shower drain.

Kyungsoo grins as he turns the water off. Baekhyun is already half-asleep, listing against the shower wall with his eyes mostly closed. 

“Come on,” Kyungsoo whispers and guides him out of the shower by his hips. “Let me dry you off and get you dressed for bed.” He’s not a spoiled little rich boy the way Kyungsoo thought when they first met, but he is  _ Kyungsoo’s  _ little rich boy to spoil. And so he does. He dries Baekhyun off and helps him into a pair of boxers and the black sweatpants Baekhyun likes. Kyungsoo offers him a t-shirt, but Baekhyun just stumbles off to bed. 

“You come on,” he grumbles, trying to tug Kyungsoo with him.

“I will. Let me use the toilet and then I’ll join you, okay?” An incoherent noise from the bed is the only reply he gets. 

Kyungsoo is washing his hands, just about ready to join Baekhyun in bed when the phone on the bathroom counter buzzes twice. He frowns, confused. No one should have this number, it’s one of his last burners. He picks up the phone to find a text from an unknown number telling him that his contract for Byun Baekhyun has been reactivated, has been  _ doubled.  _

He blinks at the zeroes listed on the screen. It’s a lot of money, a  _ lot  _ of fucking money. The sort of money he always thought he’d do anything for.

Kyungsoo calls Yixing, number memorized after years of injuries. He leaves a voicemail. “You were right, I need another passport and another set of papers. You can say we’re married if that makes it easier. We’ll be ready to leave in the morning, room seven.” 

Then he fills the sink with water and drops the phone inside. 

He slips into bed beside Baekhyun, kissing his cheek and pulling him close to cuddle. Baekhyun is mostly asleep, but he smiles and leans into Kyungsoo’s touch, mumbling softly as he settles down for the night. Kyungsoo kisses his soft, slack mouth. “We’re leaving for China in the morning.”

“Both of us,” Baekhyun grumbles, trying to open his eyes but failing.

Kyungsoo nods, then, when he realizes Baekhyun can’t open his eyes to look at him, kisses him again as an answer. “How could I go without you? We’re a team.”

“Long-haul.”

“Yeah, long-haul,” Kyungsoo smiles and gets comfortable, yawning as he feels sleep crawl up his spine as well. Baekhyun is warm, wrapped around him like a koala, tucked in so closely to Kyungsoo’s chest that neither of them can move. He realizes he’s setting himself up for a lifetime of this, of having Baekhyun with him every single day, falling asleep beside him every single night. And he decides that he doesn’t mind, that he likes it.

Kyungsoo decides that Baekhyun is the only person he wants to spend all his time with, and the best part of it is that he’s pretty sure Baekhyun feels the exact same way.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! If you liked it, please leave a kudos and a comment! I'll leave my links, and the links of those that have helped me, here once I'm revealed. <3


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